Ping for Pong

Inspiration

Table tennis enthusiasts at Georgia Tech struggle to find tables to play on around campus outside of Table Tennis Club. Ping for Pong aims to eliminate this issue by compiling the tables available on campus into a website and displaying them on an interactive map.

What it does

On the site, each building containing a ping pong table will have a marker over it. When the marker is clicked, a box with more information will hover over the marker. The box will contain information about where the table is located within the building, as well other notes such as hours of operation. Players can also use the form at the bottom of the site to submit new tables they found on campus for confirmation.

How we built it

The components on the site were made through React, and styled with CSS. To embed an interactive map onto the site, we used Google's Maps JavaScript API.

Challenges we ran into

Half of our team was unfamiliar with React, where we built a majority of our code, so that was something we needed to discuss in terms of work distribution. Also, creating cohesion between the React system, stylistic guides, and the API was something that took a large amount of our time to try and effectively work on.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We worked to create an interactive website to allow users to see what ping pong tables are active and which are available to be played on. We hope this will localize all of the players onto one service instead of being spread across Discord, Reddit, GroupMe, and other platforms used across Georgia Tech campus.

What we learned

As computer science underclassmen (and a mathematics underclassmen), we learned how to use the Maps JavaScript API in our project website and how to work with React to create user interfaces. We also learned how to break down a project and distribute tasks among members in an efficient way.

What's next for Ping for Pong

For the future development of Ping for Pong, we intend to include back-end functionality to save player info and create accounts to let others know who is playing where. We also have the intention of allowing logged-in players the option to form groups when indicating group playing at a table. ion