Friend Compass

Inspiration

This project was born out of limitation: Owen, one of the creators of the Friend Compass does not have a data plan. Instead, what many data plans do offer is unlimited call and texting. Combine this with map games like Pikmin Bloom and Pokemon Go, and you have the Friend Compass.

The Friend Compass aims to connect friends in unexpected places. You never know when your friend might be shopping a grocery isle away! And with fully integrated SMS connectivity, you won't have to worry about your data draining away.

What it does

The Friend Compass is an Android App and acts like an actual compass, showing your direction and turning when you turn, but also shows all of the friends you've made throughout Hack the North as a little marker. Tap a friend to lock on and show extra details like distance. Signing in is a breeze. We've made it as easy as scanning your Hack the North badge. Adding friends is done in the same way.

How we built it

We built Friend Compass with Twilio and Amazon DynamoDB on the backend and Android Studio with Kitlio for frontend. Twilio is a SMS messaging app which uses a version of node.js for talking to clients. SMS messages are coded with locational info that constantly updates yourself and everyone around you using coordinates. We use Amazon DynamoDB to store all info and the clients display it all, which we built with Android Studio.

Challenges and Accomplishments

Our main challenge was learning it all! This was our first ever hackathon, and by this point neither of us knew how to use any of the tools we used in our final project. We found Twilio confusing and annoying to build, Android Studio unfriendly and unintuitive, and our ideas overambitious for our situation. Perhaps the most unfortunate roadblock, Kyle only has an iPhone, so testing had to be done in the very end of the hackathon.

But we're proud of all of the work we've done this weekend! We've definitely learned heaps on unfamiliar programming languages, online applications and generative AI, even though we didn't use it in the project.