Shelter Connect

Inspiration

Being from hometowns on both the West and East Coast and working in dog shelters throughout our childhood, we have both seen the difficulties shelters face when trying to accommodate all dogs that are sent to the shelter. However, each shelter only has a certain number of vacancies. If there is not a vacancy in the shelter and adoption rates are low, the shelter is forced to euthanize the dog--an unspoken truth amongst animal care in the United States. However, this problem could be solves with communication between the shelters and an easy way for the shelters to find a way to give all dogs a home.

What it does

Shelter Connect allows shelters to communicate with one another to find vacancies

How we built it

Using the AWS Cloud9 IDE we integrated the Amazon Location API with the Linked List data structure to store the data of local (Hartford, Connecticut) dog shelters and output the locations with availability. For the backend development we used Java. For the frontend we used HTML and CSS.

Challenges we ran into

Neither of us were familiar with HTML or CSS before developing the Shelter Connect, so there was a huge learning curve in terms of front end development. Additionally, as we are currently taking Data Structures in college, our data structures knowledge is relatively new, and paired with an API there were challenges.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of the fact that we were able to output a technically challenging product in under 24 hours and learn multiple new computer science concepts. Additionally, we are proud that we were able to use APIs that are used by professionals.

What we learned

Technically, we learned HTML, CSS, and the Amazon Location API. In addition to technical skills, we learned the importance of communication in development with one another and how to stay calm under stressful situations. We also learned how to utilize collaborative software like Github, to keep track of progress.