Inspiration

  1. There are many events where many people congregate together (concerts, conferences, etc.) due to similar interests (fans of a singer attending concert, environmental protection advocates attending climate change conference). However, there often lack a platform for these group of people in a particular location to interact freely at a large scale, just like how it is done on traditional social media platforms.
  2. There are times when people in a particular location are bored and waiting (e.g. in a queue or in train breakdowns), but they do not make use of the opportunity to interact with each other.

What it does

"Snapchat" for users at the same place with the same interest.

How we built it

Android app built with Unity Game Engine, that implements a chat messaging app over tcp connections within the same LAN.

Challenges we ran into

Tried to implement chat app with P2P connection over Wifi on Android Studio. We were complete newbies to Android Studio and P2P routing between nodes was too challenging. We switched over to tcp connections using Unity Game Engine instead. However, tcp connections are unstable over the internet, and only stable in localhost, so our app only allow users within the same LAN to communicate.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  1. We managed to come up with an app from scratch in Unity Game Engine despite switching over from Android Studio about 12 hours into the competition.
  2. We worked with and learned unfamiliar technologies. All of us have no prior experience in Android Studio and 2 of us have no prior experience in Unity.

What we learned

Some Android Studio, some Unity

What's next for Flock

Use P2P connection and routing, allow sharing of photos/files

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