Run From The Kids

avoid preachers, petitioners, beggars, and others on your way to class

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Inspiration

Since UCF is a public space, there are public preachers, campaigners, political activists, beggars, and more all around campus. Sometimes, I just want to go to class and not be bothered on my way there. Lately, there have been groups telling me to donate "For The Kids", which is a good cause, but I've already donated!

What it does

Run From The Kids is designed to allow students to avoid these distractions on their way to class. Inspired by Waze, this app allows users to report where they have encountered some distractions, and post it on a map for other users.

How I built it

One of my goals for this project was to use as many Google services as possible. Here's what I used:

* Google Maps API
* Google Cloud Firestore (Firebase)
* Google Compute VM (for hosting)
* Google Domains

Otherwise, it's just a HTML, CSS, JS website. No frameworks! The server is nginx running on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. SSL cert provided by Let's Encrypt.

Challenges I ran into

* I set up the server incorrectly a few times
* I struggled to think of this project in the beginning. I actually started working at 9PM on Saturday!!

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

It's hosted on my new .dev domain, and it uses HTTPS!

What I learned

* I should have an idea before I start a hackathon
* I learned about Firebase/Firestore, which I haven't used before
* I got to explore more of Google's Cloud Platform, which I have only used a little bit in the past

What's next for Run From The Kids

The website needs a lot of UI work, and I'd like to add several features:

* Ability to upvote/downvote submissions
* User login (via Firebase!!)
* Set radius of affect
* Custom marker icons based on type of issue
* Details when you click on a marker
* Image uploading through Firebase Storage
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