Inspiration
Given the prompt of "Restoration" we were quick to start thinking of what we would like to see restored. As a joke, one group member said that he would like his sleep schedule to be restored, after laughing about it, we quickly realized that going back to in person learning would need us fixing our sleep, study, and productivity habits. We strove to build an easy to use web app that could house everything a student needs to seamlessly transition back to in person learning. We hope this can help others achieve what we hope to achieve going back in person.
What it does
"On Track" was build with productivity and ease of use in mind. It allows you to log in and authenticate with a Google account, once you're in, you have access to a personalized calendar, daily schedule, and to-do list based on your Google events. You also get access to a programmable alarm meant to remind you when to sleep and take breaks from studying. Finally, you get access to a wonderfully relaxing 24/7 lo-fi music station, available to you whenever you'd like.
How we built it
We wanted this project to focus on React.js, building upon this framework. All of our components are created and rendered in React, with Bootstrap used to properly format elements and support browser resizing. Hosting and Authentication/login is handled with Google Firebase, which also saves users so that custom properties could be applied. Libraries such as moments are used whenever data such as date/time are needed.
Challenges we ran into
Getting the Google authentication flow working as we would like was a bit difficult and required a bit of trial and error. We were not getting the behavior we were expecting at first and ran into issues trying to debug the issue. We were actually able to reference one of our past hackathon submissions (namely Snippy from RUHacks) where we ran into a similar problem. This enabled us to solve the auth flow issue and get our user login working as intended.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Going into this hackathon, our goal was to gain a working knowledge and understanding of React.js, a framework that is widely used in the software development industry. We can proudly say that we gained that and more. We were able to follow guides and tutorials to learn enough and let us build the React components we desired. We hope to continue on our React.js adventure in the coming future.
What we learned
side from learning about the technologies themselves, we also learned about problem solving when it comes to software development. There are many resources available to you, it is just a matter of knowing where and how to look for them. We learned a lot about the research element that goes into software development and are definitely better coders as a result.
What's next for On Track
We hope to add more Google event support, including adding Events through On Track as well as an auto-compiling to-do list with priorities sorted out. We were very excited to work on this project and hope to follow similar endeavors in the future.
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