NMK - Tracking your Carbon Footprint

​​Our project is an app that tracks your carbon footprints using your GPS speed. It allows you to compare your footprint with others, creating a competitive sense, pushing you to walk / bike more.

Comment

Inspiration

We have firsthand seen our schoolmates who live close to school drive there for convenience. We thought about walking or cycling to school whenever possible. This not only reduces carbon emissions but also promotes physical activity, contributing to a healthier lifestyle. Schools can create safe pathways and bike racks to support this initiative.

What it does

Our app solves excessive carbon emission. It tracks someone’s speed and distance using GPS to see if they’re in a car. This results in the calculation of total carbon emissions from driving a car. Next, the code averages the carbon emissions by 24 hours to result in an average daily carbon emission in kilograms. The kilograms per day is cross referenced on a scale from zero (no emission) to the highest per capita emissions, the average Qatar person. The app also has pages to teach you how to reduce carbon emissions when it comes to travel methods. Another feature is being able to see your current driver's details and how it affects your carbon emissions. The app pushes your data to a database so you can compare your stats with others, to provide a competitive sense to bike and walk more.

How we built it

We started with a webapp, and we used replit for frontend. For the backend, we used a nodejs server, and used expressjs to set it up. We used socket io for communication between client and server, and we used supabase as a free database. We also include a GPS tracking system so that people can be aware of their carbon footprints, hence, enabling us to pursue a login / logout system so that people can compare their carbon footprint to their peers.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into many challenges. One of the main challenges we ran into was the decision of the IDE to use for this application. We thought about using IntelliJ IDEA, but settled on using Replit. This was because some of us had trouble downloading the IDE. After this, we also had trouble finding free collaboration, but finally found Replit. Another issue was that none of us were very skilled with using databases and node.js, but we eventually figured it out

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Accomplishments that we are proud of include coding and designing a website in 24 hours. We also managed to sleep for very little time to get as much work done. We also are very proud of using supabase to have a way to store account data for being able to view others profiles.

What we learned

We learned about important time management skills. We had to break up our 24 hours into brainstorming, backend coding, frontend design, power naps, and breaks. We also learned many techniques for staying away. This includes sparingly sipping soda to stay awake and taking quick power naps.

What's next for NMK - Tracking your Carbon Footprint

The next steps for NMK - Tracking your Carbon Footprint would include having calculations for other carbon emissions. This would include plane and train travel. Other things would include how much you save by inputting whether you are carpooling. Also, other steps could be transferring to an app rather than a website for a cleaner UI. However, this would sacrifice accessibility.

Share this project:

Updates