Inspiration
As Canadians, we are blessed to be living in a country that provides us with so many opportunities and resources for our benefit. However far too many of our citizens have to spend mental energy stressing over where their next meals are coming from. Even in a country as developed as Canada, 1 in 8 households are still food insecure. Our app aims to help those in need can locate any and all food resources available to them, starting with our hometown of Ottawa, Ontario, to ensure nobody is left hungry.
What it does
Ottawa Food Help collects the information of food banks and community fridges in the city of Ottawa, and displays them on an interactive map to help the user locate the food source nearest to them.
The app has several features. Firstly, we implemented custom-made information windows to show information of a food bank, including their address, phone number, hours of operation. A clickable link redirects the user to their website, where they can find more information about the specific food bank’s mission, registration, and procedures. Users looking to donate to those in need of food may also use the platform to find food banks to donate to.
The app also displays community fridges around the city with a different marker. Newly placed fridges are able to be registered by any users. The fridge will be saved in an online database, have its own marker placed on the map, and made available for all to see. From the app, users will also be able to see the current stock of each fridge, and with the integration of the Google Maps API, users are provided with directions to whichever food bank or community fridge they choose.
Finally, the app contains a page dedicated to links of affordable recipes available to the user, if they ever find themselves interested in cooking something themselves, rather than use local food resources.
How we built it
The application was developed in Java, using the Android Studio IDE. We implemented the Google Maps API for the map, as well as Google Firebase as an online database.
Challenges we ran into
Both of our members have no prior experience in programming an Android application (or participating in a hackathon), so many of our problems stemmed from a lack of familiarity with the platform itself. Many hours were spent ironing out unfamiliar code, including the integration of Firebase and the Google Maps API. One of our members was completely new to java, which makes it all the more impressive how he was able to grasp its concepts and apply them to our app during the hackathon’s short time frame.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
As this is the first hackathon for both of our members, we are quite happy we were able to create a functional app at all. We are extremely proud to have learned, from a starting point of 0 experience, how to create an app in Android Studio and to have applied our new knowledge to create a half-decent looking, functional app.
What we learned
Our first hackathon taught each of us how to efficiently work as a team to create a project with a tight deadline. We also gained some great experience in mobile app development, as well as the technologies we used. This is also our first time using GitHub, so we are happy to begin to familiarize ourselves with the tool.
What's next for Ottawa Food Help
In the future, we plan on adding several features, such as:
- Geolocation of the user’s current location, and a list of recommended resources closest to them
- Moderation and validation of registered fridges
- Expansion outside of just Ottawa
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.