NYCFindIt!

Inspiration

Long, long ago (in like 2006), my teammates and I had just got out of the subway, and needed to transfer to another bus (Queens problems). After getting on the bus, my friend Arafat had noticed that he lost his phone. We tried to retracing our steps, but his phone was as lost as a tourist looking for Times Square. We then realized that there wasn't an efficient Lost and Found system in NYC, so why wait for someone else to make it, when we could do it ourselves?! That's when we made the app NYCFindIt! , which allows for users to have access to an efficient Lost and Found system, in one of the biggest cities in the country -- NYC!

What it does

NYCFindIt is a mobile application that allows users to either post a picture with a unique description, location found, location dropped, category of item (labeled as tag), and the borough. If you are looking for an item, simply fill out the tag and the borough (using Spinners), and the app will directly navigate you to items that match the tag and borough. You can simply click on an item, and all the details will pop up. If you are uploading an item that has been found, simply click "Found", and the camera application will automatically open up. Once you are done taking the perfect picture of your item, users are required to fill out a description, location found, location dropped, tag, and borough. Once submitted, the unique item will be added to a database that stores all Found items, waiting to be searched by users!

How we built it

Using Android Studio, our team used Java as the primary language to create the Item class, as well as a separate class for each unique page. Some classes that we implemented were the Lost class, which allows users to search in the Lost section of the app, Found class which allows users to post items into the app's database, a Results class which displays all relevant results based on a user's input from the Lost page, and a Details class which displays an Item's description, location found and dropped, tags, and borough.

Challenges we ran into

Some challenges we ran into included the learning curve of Android Studio. Although most of our team has experience in Java, learning Android Studio and its functionalities was definitely a challenge. One specific functionality that we had no experience was accessing the camera application. In our Found class, we wanted a user to take a picture of the item, but didn't know how to display it after the photo was taken.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Some accomplishments that we're proud of is creating a simple app that would allow users to gain access to a city-wide Lost and Found, as well as making it simple for users to navigate through our app. Although it is simple from what we accomplished this weekend, this app can definitely have potential to be something big, and can really impact our city, if used correctly.

What we learned

As our first official hackathon, we learned a lot though the various workshops provided during this weekend. Whether it was learning about python, html, or the basics of React Native, we all learned individual skills that we can apply to projects in the near future. In regards to our project, something we all experienced was working on a single project as a group. Giving individual tasks to certain teammates, and helping each other out with errors (many, many errors), we persevered and accomplished a project that we are proud of.

What's next for NYCFindIt

Some additions that we can definitely add in the future are more front-end additions, making the app more user-friendly, and overall optimization of code. We hope to include these additions in the near future :) .