pillows-and-plates

Come to be fed and rest your head, with Pillows and Plates.

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Inspiration

Homelessness is a rampant problem for the DFW area. We asked ourselves, how can we assist these citizens who might not have internet access to find food and shelter?

Our app allows homeless shelters and soup kitchens update digital ads at bus stops and strategic locations around the city in real time to allow homeless individuals to find food and shelter on a consistent basis.

What it does

Uses a raspberry pi to real time update a billboard with a map, and meal and bed availability at our partner organizations.

The organization app was developed for ios, designed to live on an in-house cell phone for quick and easy updating purposes.

How we built it

The app was developed for ios using swift for programming, sketch for UI/UX design.

The server side uses a node.js express server connected to a firebase database.

The front end was developed in HTML/CSS and the program was installed on a raspberry pi.

Challenges we ran into

Firebase database was new to all of us, so we had some growing pains with communicating to the db from the node side and the swift side.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We designed a functional app with UI/UX in mind.

What we learned

We learned about firebase, sockets.io, and working as a team to get sh*t done!

What's next for pillows-and-plates

Hopefully, a partnership with Dallas' local government and DART systems to sponsor assistance to reach out to those in need.

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