EcoLink

Team members:

1. Shovit
2. Shine

Track: Communication Age Division: 18+

Inspiration

Often times when we go on social media sites, we are festered pointless and unhealthy content. This makes it very hard for like minded users who want to contribute the sustainability of our planet to organize campaigns. Having a specially curated platform to accomplish this task, makes it easy for users to focus on what they truly value, rather than getting lost in a major platform.

What it does

EcoLink allows for users to select specific cities in their given state, province, etc. and attend of host campaigns related to sustainability. You can create your own account using our account creation system. All site visitors can see all of the campaigns that have been planned or already completed. If they wish to view the campaigns related to a specific city, they can choose from either the filter or click on that area on the map. Users can only create and join campaigns once they are logged in. With all these features, we can ensure that there will be plenty of sustainability campaigns undertaken, and that it will all be done through the users.

How we built it

We built EcoLink using Django for the backend and tailwind for the frontend. For the implementation of the maps, we used Leaflet. For the actual map layer its self we used MapTiler. To create the polygons, which you can interact with on the map we used geojson.io to map out the polygon coordinates and then used the Leaflet and MapTiler APIs, which included many methods that allowed for the manipulation of the polygons and map.

Challenges we ran into

We many challenges with implementing the map. We didn't think it would be so hard to add a map which we can also interact with. We found the learning resources for Leaflet and MapTiler to not be sufficient enough to easily understand the syntax. We also faced problems in Django with adding a account feature, posting feature, and database management in general.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of how we were able to implement the map and our sleek design. After all the trouble we went through, we are satisfied that we were able to create such a web service in the allotted time. We are also proud of the backend feature as, even though it might go unnoticed, it was very difficult to create.

What we learned

We learned a lot about how maps are created and implemented in the website. It gave use a new found sense of appreciation for services like google maps, which we would other wise take for granted. We also learned that with enough dedication and hard work we could accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. The project has given us motivation in our tech journey, and we hope that we will never forget this experience.

What's next for EcoLink

We plan to add more features into the EcoLink platform. One feature is the increase in customization of users accounts and adding a commenting features will allows for feedback and better collaboration. We also plan on adding a points system with rewards users which have participated and contributed to campaigns. These points could be redeemed for gift card, swag, etc.

Built With

• django
• javascript
• leaflet.js
• maptiler
• sqlite
• tailwind