IPoSMS

Inspiration

Everyone knows that by far the worst part of University is using eduroam. So why not remove this dependency entirely and implement all your internet browsing needs over SMS said absolutely no one.

What it does

Users can use a text based browser and enter as well as follow links on/to websites operating entirely over SMS. -the app doesnt require internet permissions of any sort-

How we built it

We first set out on writing a Flask app in order, to implement returning requests to users. implementing twilios webhook functionality. Its a fairly simple just returining encoded websites occasionaly fragmenting if texts get too big in size.

We then forked an existing implementation of a text browser (atob), this was neccesary as no one on the team had any experience of android development and the project was more concerned with implementing SMS in this browser.

we then ~~butchered~~ re-implemented parts of the browser that depended on internet connections with android texting functionality.

Challenges we ran into

implementing the SMS functionality in the browser as none of us had any experience in android development before starting the project.

Locking ourselves out of twilio as we forgot that the repo was public for most of the hackathon -public auth keys bad-

receiving android text notifications and reading them into the app proved difficult, as there was very few pointers in documentation in how to do this, eventually implementing a blocking text listener for a certain number until transmission has complete

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Making a revolutionary text based based browser that only costs a few pounds per hour, although humorous this application does have some practical uses in situations were cellular data is limited or where the infrastructure doesn't exist entirely.

What we learned

Before setting out on the project, none of us had any experience of Android Development, encouraging us to explore and try new things that may or may not work.

None of us had used flask either although Flask was relatively simple to work with.

It gets expensive quickly to load big sites