Jot

We don't have to deal with traffic alone

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Inspiration

Our team’s inspiration was mostly inspired by our track (urban innovation). Every year, the average American wastes over a full week in traffic. This lost time could be mitigated in two ways: by reducing traffic or making traffic more enjoyable. We aimed to provide an entertaining and immersive community experience while driving.

What it does

Jot creates an entertaining and informative community interface within the user’s radius while driving, displaying messages left by other drivers in the past, and allowing the user to leave their own message using speech-to-text. This app works essentially as a community message board, related to user location. It can be used to recommend places to eat, warn of roadblocks, or alert drivers of other hazards on the road.

How we built it

In terms of tools used to build Jot, the main tools implemented were Android Studio and Java for most coding/interface/UI work.

IBM Watson was used to allow for speech-to-text conversion on the user’s end and Ford's Smart Device Link provided text-to-speech to allow dictation of posted messages

Postgresql + postgrest were used to manage and maintain our database for this project

One of the harder parts was using Ford’s Smart Device Link to allow interfacing through the user’s smart device to the car’s head unit

Challenges we ran into

A few of the major difficulty points we encountered while working on our project had to do with interfacing with Ford’s Smart Device Link. The hardware provided didn’t allow for GPS location functionality and the microphones attached to the testing units also didn't seem to transfer certain audio data correctly. Despite this, we found other ways to collect the data we needed.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

In only 24 hours, we integrated voice-to-text recognition, Smart Device Link applet interfacing, relative geographical location and a fully functioning bulletin interface. A lot of learning had to be done

What we learned

While working on Jot, we learned how to adapt our solutions to more accurately solve problems we encountered, as well as how to collaborate to make our workflow quick and effective. Additionally, we learned how applets interact with external hardware

What's next for Jot

Polishing/app cleanup and refinement, expand dictation and train more accurate text conversion, flesh out the bulletin system.

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