Street-wise

Street-wise is an android app that makes the streets safer! It sends reminders and notifications to users after a certain amount of time to make sure they are fine after leaving the house.

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Inspiration

Whenever Kenneth's sister, Tiffany, who just so happens to be the designer of team Street-wise, would leave home to go hang out with her friends, her parents would always tell her to notify them once she got to her destination. However, Tiffany would almost always forget to give her parents a call or text. Meanwhile, Tiffany and Kenneth's parents would simply just assume that she got to her destination safely. (Or they forgot). While Tiffany was lucky enough to return home safely every time, there are many incidents around the world where this is not the case. Car crashes, getting lost, kidnappings, and more propose a huge threat on people trying to go from place to place. However, our forgetful nature often times prevents us from checking in with each other. Street-wise helps improve quality of life by automating this vital task that could potentially save lives.

What it does

Street-wise is an android application that reminds both parents and children to check in with one another after a given amount of time. Children will receive an SMS message through their phones while parents will receive an in-app notification. The child's destination can be recorded and displayed on a built in Google maps screen that is in the app in case the child needs help and his or her location must be found. Thanks to this quality of life change, parents now no longer have to risk forgetting about their child if they are in danger!

How we built it

We built the app by using Flutter for the frontend and Firebase for the backend. More precisely, we used Firebase Auth for Authentication and Firestore for the NoSQL database. We also used the Twilio API to send the SMS as well as the flutter in_app_notification plugin to send notifications inside the app itself. The Google Maps API from Google Cloud was used to create the Maps Screen.

Challenges we ran into

We struggled trying to create the in app notification system. We constantly ran into dependency errors and SDK version mismatches. We tried using many different techniques but we soon settled on the in_app_notification plugin for its simplicity.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of being able to implement an external communication system within our app. This was something none of us had ever done before and getting the Twilio API to successfully talk to phones through our app made us extremely proud.

What we learned

We learned how to setup in-app notifications and send SMS messages programmatically. We also learned that dependency errors can cause huge problems and you should always check version compatibilities.

What's next for Street-wise

We plan on improving the UI a little bit more. We think that by adding a more attractive screen, we can catch the attention of more users.

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