Locus

Ease yourself into a new neighborhood

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Inspiration

Moving to a new neighborhood can be quite daunting.

We get it, you've found your dream home. But how will your morning commute be? How safe is the neighborhood? How much is gas? These are just a few of the factors to consider when moving.

Let Locus help you out. Simply type in an address, and Locus curates points of interest, scores quality-of-life metrics, and even locates where you could grab a bite to eat.

What it does

Calls a variety of API's such as: Onboard API, Teleport API, Esri Demographics. With this data, we use a scoring algorithm to display a Locus Community Score.

How I built it

You'd think that a project like this requires a backend. However, thanks to the ArcGIS API for JavaScript, all of this is possible in the client-side of JavaScript. This project will (likely) only be contained with 2 HTML files, 2 CSS files, and a very large JavaScript file.

Challenges I ran into

Patrick - My complete lack of GIS domain knowledge stumped me when I was thinking about the idea, since I had no idea what's feasible and what's not. However, I'm thankful to have Reed do the hard parts of our map logic.

Darlene - Formatting the API keys to provide the correct output (JSON format) was challenging for some of the APIs that did not have a lot of documentation. After some troubleshooting and lots of external research, I was able to find a solution. This helped me learn how important formatting is when implementing APIs. It is crucial to be as detail-oriented as possible during this process when performing a GET request from the APIs.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Patrick - I'm really happy that all of my team members are eager to contribute. I feel that our synergy is the strongest asset to tackle this project head-on. I'm also proud of myself for being able to manage leading a hackathon team for the first time and being able to request from various types of API's.

What I learned

Patrick - Anything is possible with API's. Seriously.

What's next for Locus

  • Establish an actual Node backend
  • Use a front end framework
  • Fine-tune the Locus Score algorithm

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