FastFly

A friendly fly that helps you get to your flight!

Inspiration

Aks was traveling through an airport on Thursday before HackGT took place and had only 40 minutes between connecting flights, which were in different terminals. When I ranted to my team about this, my friend Sai excitedly suggested that we attempt to tackle this issue. So, we decided to develop an android app with a simplistic, stylish GUI to help travelers focus on their destination and how to get there, with no distractions.

What it does

This app obtains the user's input for their flight's airport, their flight's gate number, and the departure time of the flight. This is done by obtaining a subsection of a google map and displaying the relevant terminal with great detail, providing a familiar environment for people to navigate.

How we built it

Using android studio, the team split up tasks for front-end/UI and back-end development. Michael and Aks developed the front-end portion, while Sai and Abhi developed the back-end of the program. We used material.io design guidelines for the creation of the UI, and Java code along with the Google Maps SDK for the back-end.

Challenges we ran into

Working in a new environment is always difficult, and at times we had to spend an hour revising a small detail to ensure the app would not crash. Additionally, as we were limited in time and resources, we were only able to add functionality for a single terminal in Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. This was the initial push, and it was the hardest; any further development will be significantly faster.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We have collectively never developed a mobile app before. As such, we are extremely proud to present a functioning app for consideration at this hackathon. Having never used android studio, we are also extremely proud to have learnt how to use it over the span of 24 hours to fine tune our app.

What we learned

Developing an app is much harder than it may seem! There are a lot of little details that need tracking and consideration, or your app will crash at launch (this is not fun). And attempting to do so in a 36 hour timeframe, while needing sleep, is even more challenging! We have understood that sitting down in a more regular, set weekly meeting time will be a more efficient way to grow FastFly.

What's next for FastFly

We plan to incorporate multiple airport navigation, as well as navigation to any location within the airport. Taking it a step further, we will aspire to potentially incorporate functionality to help users detect areas with strong WiFi signals, seating areas, and maybe even charging ports. Basically, if there is anything we feel will help our users relax a little more while traveling at the airport, we can try and incorporate it!