Inspiration
You remember it well: The bait fish had been frantically jumping from the water near the boat all day, but not even a bite! The day was done and your cooler sat empty. As you took a last sip of beer, you growled at the ocean, "Alright, that's it!"
It was time to go.
But then it happened-- Your rod suddenly bent forward, violently jerking from its holder and going airborne as you dove through the air to grab it. Bottles and tackle scattered to the floor, clattering and clanking and adding to the chaos. The reel squealed, quickly unwinding as the fish tugged the boat through the water.
"Man, this thing is big!" And it was-- Emerging from the water not 10 yards away was the biggest striped bass you'd ever seen. Slowly you reeled it in, eyeing the net at the far side of the boat. Calmly, steadily, you inched towards the net. The fish was within reach. You grabbed the net-- "Gotcha!" It was on the boat, flipping and flopping. You lifted it from the net, admiring your catch when-- Well, it all happened so fast: you must've stumbled on a beer bottle and next thing you knew, the fish was gone.
Too bad your buddies don't believe you!
HooknUp.Net understands, and we're here to help: download our app and immediately brag about any catch before it gets away!
Get in the game with HooknUp.Net: All you need is your phone! Gain points by uploading photos of your catches, trying out new bodies of water, and exploring rarely fished areas. Hook up with your Mates to see who really catches the most fish, and automatically participate in local, regional, and global competitions. Keep a tally and know who really won that fishing trip: biggest, smallest, most diverse, and most overall! (You can also leave comments on each catch, making sure to bust on your buddies who had to stay home today and hang out with the in-laws!)
Fish for fun, fish for fame -- but also fish to help marine scientists track fish populations and better understand the dynamics and diversity in our oceans and freshwater bodies.
What it does
On HooknUp.Net, once the user creates an account, they can create a profile to share their catches, tag their favorites create albums of their fishing trips, and view and comment on a Mate’s catches and page.
The HooknUp.Net mobile app allows users capture and share photos to their "Trophy Wall," which automatically shares their catches with their friends ("Mates"). This is gamefied this with a point and status system (e.g., on local, regional, and global levels, one begins at a low-point status like “city slicker” or “desk jockey” and ultimately seeks various bragging rights, like having a status of “fish whisperer” or “poseidon”). When a user captures a photo within the app, the app will automatically timestamp and geotag when and where the fish was caught. The user will optionally be able to suggest the fish type/species, which ultimately is verified by HooknUp.Net (long term: pattern recognition / machine learning algorithm). In addition to keeping track of your normal fishing spots and successful catches, this information will also be stored in a database. This database will aid marine biologists in understanding the dynamics and distribution of fish populations in any body of water accessed by users of HooknUp.Net. Furthermore, scientific value can be added to the database by incentivizing the exploration of regions with sparse data and measurements by giving points to fish caught in these regions, etc.
To deter repeat submissions and bad behavior (e.g., pics of one’s fist or other body parts), user integrity will be ranked, and if repeated bad behavior reaches a critical threshold, the user will lose points and be leveled down. It is also necessary to implement a procedure to disallow multiple tags of the same catch (currently on honor system).
How we built it
The project was split into two portions: (1) a mobile app for the Android operating system, and (2) the website and server. The app uses Android’s development environment to capture photos, store location and time data, as well as sends the data to a web server. For automated scalability and maintenance, the website and server are in development using Python’s Django web framework and Google’s App Engine on the Google Cloud Platform.
Challenges we ran into
Both of us came into this hackathon with the intentions of either using it as an excuse to learn new skills, or if the need required it, leveraging our pre-existing skill sets (e.g., one of us has an extensive background in scientific and statistical data analysis, while the other has experience with hardware). Upon hearing of the needs and desires of the hackathon organizers (e.g., to help build complementary data sets to assess and track fish populations), we decided our best bet was develop a gamefied social media experience for fisherman, requiring as little as possible for a user to get involved. To us, this meant limiting a user’s “buy in” to only a cell phone, which most people already own. With just a cell phone, the user is able to participate in friendly, competitive fishing “tournaments” while contributing to a valuable data set that could be of interest to scientists and parties from fishing related industries.
Long story short: at the beginning of the hackathon, website/server and app development were completely foreign to the both of us, which meant that we needed to rapidly learn the basics. And so our true challenge was to literally “hack” our way to a proof-of-concept for a product that we had a great vision for, but limited background in developing. For Kevin, the challenge was/is in almost every part of the full-stack development of a dynamic, social media website, while for Anthony it was/is in figuring out how to design and deploy an mobile app that could send and retrieve information to the site’s web server / database.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The entire experience was rewarding, both on a personal and professional-development level. Without a doubt, we are happy that we were able to develop a product prototype that met the needs of the organizers, while learning new skills and gaining experience in rapid product development. We are proud that we did not give up despite feeling incredibly lost and challenged throughout the entire development process. At points we certainly realized that we took on a project that was much bigger than what’s realistic for two hackathon first-timers to complete in a weekend, and there were times that we considered throwing in the towel. But we persisted with the idea that the process itself was rewarding: creatively tossing ideas back and forth, establishing a workflow and development roles, learning new skills sets, and with a little creativity, developing a product that will help marine scientists, while giving fisher folk a way to connect, communicate, and compete in a fun, interactive way.
What we learned
- Android app programming and development
- The Google Cloud Platform, Google App Engine
- Python's Django web framework
- Rapid prototyping and product development
- A lot can be learned under pressure at a hackathon :-p
What's next for HooknUp.Net
We plan on continuing to improve and develop HooknUp.Net, and we're interested in deploying the site/app as soon as possible as a minimum viable product, so that we can continue to learn how interested parties will use and interact with HooknUp.Net. We expect that all of our lofty goals for this project will be reached, but in step with active user engagement on preliminary deployments of the concept.
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