RollCall

A location-sharing app for circles of friends with a special twist.

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Inspiration

The inspiration behind Roll Call was a running joke among our friend group. Whenever someone wanted to locate the other members of our group, he or she would type "roll call" into the chat. This was everyone's cue to list their location and availability. We thought that building an app using our tradition as a foundation would be both an incredibly education and satisfying experience.

What it does

Roll Call grants the user a Firebase-authenticated login the chance to join a circle of friends. They can access their own location on a map as well as determine the position of their friends given the correct circle code. Additionally, AR is used to provide the user with a more interactive way of navigating through the world to find their special buddy.

How we built it

Roll Call is built in Unity (AR) and Android Studio (UI and UX) and uses Google Firebase for its database, storage, and location-gathering.

Challenges we ran into

We have very little Unity/Android Studio know-how between the four of us, so adapting to the new environments and understanding the API/dependencies of the two platforms proved to be the biggest time-sink and challenge. In particular, integrating Unity/Android Studio/Google Firebase so that it fit out needs was a struggle.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Finally tying Android Studio, Unity, and Google Firebase together! Dependencies suck.

What we learned

We will be implementing a friend's list and a means for a user to toggle their location sharing preferences. Moreover, we want to be able determine the location of all of the friends in a group at once (in near-real-time, so that we would see updates if they started to move).

What's next for RollCall

We built an app to help us find our friends, but they were right next to us all along.

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