Independence Connect

Helping Connect Society and Communicate Colonizer's Moves

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Inspiration

In the past, we have seen the rise of new born countries escaping from the grasps of colonization. Many of these fights took several years to iniate and finally obtain victory against their colonizing nation. As a result, I decided to make a mobile application to help aid those freedom fighters wishing to part from their colonizing nation. Although this application is applicable to many of the major instances in the world, such as many of colonized countries in Africa and Asia, I decided to choose the United States Revolutionary War lasting from April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783. Before I start going into the solution and its implementation in the app, I would like to point out that the Revolutionary War in concept similar to many other independence movements and this app can also be implemented in those time periods.

Many of the problems that occurred which brought the American Colonies on the brink of losing the revolutionary war are related to communication. In fact, the start of the Revolutionary War correlated directly to this. Paul Revere raced towards Lexington to warn them regarding the ordered arrest of Samuel Adams and John Hancock and we later know this as the Midnight Ride. However, the fact was that back then no technology existed which resulted in letter and other forms of communication that would take days or months now to be done within seconds. Hence, I am leveraging the power of technology we have today in order to help the colonists alert each other and communicate the British’s movements better and be alerted when found, organize themselves and get information regarding the independence movement quicker and read about news within minutes time rather than days.

I have created a Hybrid Mobile App, using the react-native framework and with the react library in order to create an application available both on android and iOS. However, for the demo I will be showing the IOS version. I have created an app that uses a News API, f, location tracking, geofencing and geocoding to allowing colonists to enter a location, and a system where colonists will be able to submit an alert regarding something they see to notify other who may be at that location and specify what they saw or what is going to happen. This data is then pushed to Google Firebase in real time where the data is stored and then retrieved by other users in their alerts tab bringing awareness to this secretive update. Additionally, it automatically updates the a map for a graphical representation of the alerts received. This will help colonists get updated and organized to plan future actions.

Historically, gaining Independence has been a big part for previously colonized countries. However, due to the lack of technology, communication was quite difficult especially when the colonizing country was suppressing and eliminating all sources of Independence Fighters. This application is applicable to any country in the past fighting for Independence, however, the main historic event is the United States Revolutionary War that lasted from April 19, 1775 - September 3rd, 1783. As a result, for my ByteHacks project I have leveraged the technologies of today to help connect colonists to the latest news within seconds, alert others far distanced away using an alert system with a Google Firebase Backend (Inspired by Paul Revere's Midnight Ride starting the Revolutionary War) and help find data regarding certain locations from now known data.

What it does

The first part of my solution is a News API which allows forcolonists to be informed regarding the latest news at its earliest convenience.

The second part of my solution is to access specific information regarding a location using a combination of user input and already known data from that time period. I used location tracking and geocoding to allow colonists to enter a location and find extensive details regarding that location. These details includes information regarding how many British Personnel may be at a certain location other details.

The last part of my app is a platform that allows a user, who may have special insight or information and wishes to pass it on, to fill out a quick form and push it to Google Firebase’s real-time database. This data is then retrieved by other users in the alerts tab automatically by refreshing where other users are informed of that info. This part is very similar to a social media platform but for urgent alerts and some special features such as mapping the location in the maps UI as shown in the video.

How I built it

For the displays of the News Feed in terms of design, I used Native Base's custom components which allowed me to do so. Additionally, I used react-native-maps in order to create the maps UI in the search section. I also used react-native-maps custom marker to use a custom colored marker.

For the guts of the project, I have previous experience with implementing a News API, so I redid my magic for this project in the News Feed Tab. Additionally, for the search tab, I had experience with that too, so I knew expo-permissions and expo-locations would help me gain my location which I used in order to accomplish that.

Challenges I ran into

I ran into many challenges with the database with posting and retrieving data. In general, I was able to accomplish it eventually but I will list my problems below. I had issues formatting the data and fetching the data from the correct data when handling multiple files. I eventually fixed this by finding the correct way to embed a object in a text string in its midst to retrieve its data and it worked.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

What I learned

I learned how to essentially create a social media platform in the context of a theme. I learned how to create a good looking User Interface that has been

What's next for Independence Connect

I hope this app can be used for any social cause out there as there are many. From protests to movements regarding rights in certain areas, they need a secret platform to communicate. Although this app is mainly to bind with the theme for ByteHacks Hackathon, I hope I can find a way for it to be useful for users today.

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