Drive Wise

Inspiration

The idea came from the frustration of constantly checking the best time to leave for a destination, especially when managing busy schedules. Instead of manually tracking when to depart, why not automate the process by sending a notification directly to your phone that alerts you at the optimal time to leave? This would make planning easier and reduce the stress of being late.

What it does

"Drive Wise" takes an event time and a destination address as input, calculates the optimal time to leave based on predefined travel time estimates, and sends a notification to the user's phone. It ensures that users leave at the right time to reach their destination without worrying about constant manual checking.

How we built it

HTML, CSS, and JAvascript for frontend Node.js, Twilio and express for backend

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to send notifications in real time to the user's phone without using complex APIs like Google Calendar or Google Directions. Additionally, ensuring that the time calculations were accurate and dynamic enough to adapt to various user inputs took some time to implement effectively. Managing time zones and event time formats also posed some challenges.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of building a functioning system that simplifies the process of deciding when to leave. Even without using advanced APIs, we created a straightforward solution that provides value. The minimalistic, user-friendly interface makes it accessible to anyone. We also learned a lot about time manipulation in JavaScript and notification systems.

What we learned

We learned how to handle user inputs for time and address data efficiently and how to calculate departure times. We also gained experience in designing a clean and simple user interface and in implementing real-time notification systems, which was new for us. Additionally, we realized the potential of browser notifications and how they can be leveraged for similar applications.