Pins with Pals

Share your favorite places with your friends! Join a group with your friends and see all the pins they've placed on the map. Search your favorite places by address and add to your map.

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Inspiration

We knew from the beginning that we wanted to make an Android app using Kotlin, but we did not have a firm idea of what that would be. After looking at some of the available Google API's, we thought it would be interesting to make something using the Google Maps and Google Geocoding API's. From there, we came up with the idea of making a shared map to mark fun locations with your friends.

What it does

The app allows you to login or sign up for an account. From there you can join a group and see all of the pins placed on the map by those in that group. You can also place your own customized pins at locations by address.

How we built it

We used Android Studio to create the android app using Kotlin. We connected the app to firebase for use authentication and data storage. We also connected to the Google Maps SDK to display the map and the Google Geocoding API to convert the addresses to coordinates to place on the map.

Challenges we ran into

The hardest part was just setting up all of the different API's and databases. Neither of us were familiar with Firebase so it was very hard to figure out in the beginning.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

While one of us has experience in Android development, neither of us have ever Kotlin before. As mentioned earlier, we also have not had any experience in Firebase. These platforms were difficult to learn in the beginning, but we learned a lot about them.

What we learned

We learned a lot about the language Kotlin and how to use Firebase for user authentication and for a real-time database. Evan had never done any Android development, so he learned all about how to use Android Studio and using the Google Maps APIs.

What's next for Pins with Pals

The app could be expanded to allow users to join more than one group at a time and manage those different groups on their map. If we have the time, we may want to work on this project in the future to implement that.

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