Find Routemate

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Inspiration

The story has started when we were engaged in first grade at school. We were always worried about our route to school in terms of the effectiveness of the transportation. First of all, it is the problem of overuse of gasoline transport per one person for one certain daily distance. Therefore, this individualism does not make any sense, because people would be more effective and smarter if they move across the city with companion. This is the main idea of our project.

What it does

The main purpose of the program is to identify and connect people who have a similar route to work or something. The web program calculates the distance between two coordinates and searches for other people who defined almost the same route in a radius of 200 meters around. Then, users will be provided contacts of offered people with the same route.

The user manual in our project is not necessary. We have a very simple and clear design, which contains the bar with three buttons for hiding, showing, and deleting markers of the map, provided below, and, the last but not least one, online form, serving for finding the route companions. Further, after triggering the "find" button, the user sees the side panel with information of nearby people, seeking a companion.

How we built it

The process of implementation was not easy. Firstly, we had created the plan of work and, then, started to learn Google Map API for managing the work with an online map. Afterward, we pondered concerning the mathematical calculation needed for identifying the route and nearby users. Having defined it, we divided the amount of work into back-end and front-end directions and distributed them all among us. We faced many issues during the coding starting from misspelling and up to using wrong, expired, and invalid API services. Finally, having connected the back-end and front-end, we successfully tested our project.

Challenges we ran into

As I mentioned above, we had many troubles. The most challenging was using the Google API platform concepts that were unclear at some moments, however, we managed to tackle them without causing more additional issues. In addition to this, mathematical expressions applied to the work with coordinates were hard as well.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Generally, it was our first time working with Google API services. We succeeded in using the javascript language in the bundle of google maps. Also, we are so astonished about applying the mathematical skills during the coordinates complex calculations.

What we learned

We have trained our soft skills, especially team working. One of the most valuable things at the project work is finding the mutual language to adjust the work in the favor of all members.

What's next for Find Routemate

The project was finally so good in terms of potential and idea that we decided to develop it soon and realize it as a commercial program.

Built With

• express.js
• javascript
• maps-javascript-api
• mongoose
• node.js