Paint The Town

Inspiration

We wanted something that puts recreational activities together based on occasion and/or budget. Something that eliminates the indecisive banter with your significant other, friends, family or others on what to do. Something that connects YOU to the community in your area.

What it does

The user chooses 4 specifications: age, event type, budget, and location on the website. The web application searches for the recreational activities using Google API based on user specifications.

How we built it

We used Node.js with two endpoints, connecting the mobile first front-end user interface to the server-side back-end. Deployed a production grade application to a Kubernetes Raspberry Pi cluster that was handled using AWS's route 53 cloud service. The Google maps/places API were implemented in the Node.js/Express.js back-end that returned location data upon front end form submission. We implemented Kanban in our software development process to increase productivity and manage implementations.

Challenges we ran into

The largest hurdles were integrating Google API with our back-end, connecting to our remote MongoDB server and web app design.

Accomplishments

We had a blast creating a superb front-end for our application using HTML5, Bootstrap4, Chart.js, JQuery, and CSS3. We purchased a domain for our project and were able to host it all on a Raspberry Pi cluster server with help with Kubernetes, NGINX, YAML, and Docker.

What we learned

Our passion to bring this project into reality has helped us utilize a plethora of new software. This hackathon has taught us to that time management is very key to moving on with the project. It would also help to do some research about software and APIs prior to attending the hackathon so that we have an easier time creating our project.

What's next for Paint The Town

We want to complete PaintTheTown to be available all across the globe, but tailored for the individual user, benefiting each local community, no matter how small. We know this tool can be used by anyone and everyone to efficiently plan their outings. To make this more accessible, we want to implement a mobile application available on YOUR mobile devices, as soon as possible.