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No project is complete without a cool logo (even one that's hard to see when small...)
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HotSpot app indicating no incidents of co-location with a positive individual. Black hexagons are the user's own tracked locations.
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HotSpot app indicating possible exposure to a person who has tested positive. Area of co-location is shown in red.
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HotSpot app showing some explanation text when the status button is tapped.
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Warning text and confirmation when a user declares that they have received a positive result from a COVID-19 test.
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HotSpot app showing some explanation text when the status button is tapped.
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HotSpot app indicating that the user has self-reported as being positive for COVID-19. Their last 2-weeks of locations are now hotspots.
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HotSpot app showing some explanation text when the status button is tapped.
Inspiration
Just as Dr. John Snow used geospatial analysis to combat the London Cholera outbreak in 1854, we can use these tools and techniques to combat the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020.
What it does
HotSpot Mobile App
Tech Used: React Native
The HotSpot Mobile App is first and foremost a location tracker, periodically taking a reading of the user's location and sending it to the HotSpot API. It is built with React Native, meaning that it can rapidly be used to generate both an Android and iOS version.
HotSpot API
Tech Used: Express, NodeJS, Uber H3
This is where the magic happens. Incoming user locations are binned using Uber's H3 spatial index and this is used to determine when users have potentially been in close proximity to one another. The API README file clearly lays out the endpoints and what each is used for.
HotSpot DB
Tech Used: MongoDB
How I built it
I cranked it out over the course of the weekend with the help of my wife, who selflessly took on our kids so that I could have some extra time to take part in this Hackathon.
Challenges I ran into
To be entirely honest, the biggest challenge I ran into was finding a reliable USB-C cable so that I could prototype the app on my phone! Half of the cables in my house apparently have shorts in them, so my phone kept losing connection to the laptop when I tried to deploy the latest version of the app or testing.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I think that the App and API aren't just neat, I think they could legitimately make an impact, and I'm proud of that. Of course there's always the hurdle of getting user adoption, but I would sincerely hope that the project could partner with someone like Facebook, Twitter, Uber (since their tech is integral into this project), or Google. I imagine any/all of them are looking for ways to help, and integrating with the HotSpot API would be unbelievably easy.
What I learned
I learned that sometimes, a relatively simple implementation of some neat tech can go a long way. There isn't anything particularly mind-blowing about HotSpot, but it's elegantly simple and could not only provide critical information at lightning speed to the public, but could even provide researchers and scientists even more data to study the COVID-19 spread.
What's next for HotSpot
That's the big question isn't it? I will devote what little free time I have to tightening it up here and there in the near future, but I hope that it gains some momentum from this Hackathon and goes on to be so much more than I can possibly imagine.
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