Sunbrella

Sunbrella Logo

Inspiration

As students who recently moved to Atlanta, we quickly noticed how intense the heat can get, especially during the summer and spring. Walking through downtown or even around campus often meant dealing with strong sunlight and uncomfortable routes. After struggling to navigate in extreme heat, we realized the city needed a smarter way to help people walk comfortably, especially seniors, heat-sensitive residents, and daily walkers like us. That inspired us to build Sunbrella, a tool that finds sun-safe walking paths.

What It Does

Sunbrella calculates the shadiest and safest walking routes by analyzing sunlight angles, route paths, and environmental context. Its functionalities include shade-optimized route options, GPS tracking, voice navigation for accessibility, and numerical shade scores for different routes.

How We Built It

We pieced Sunbrella together using tools we already knew and a few we had to learn. Google Maps API handled all the routing and locations. SunCalc lets us figure out the sun’s position so we can estimate shade. ElevenLabs powered the voice guide. Gemini helped us brainstorm and debug when we got stuck. And we built the whole interface with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

Challenges We Ran Into

We faced several hurdles: Our API setup gave us countless authentication and CORS errors. For a while, our routes wouldn’t refresh because old data wasn’t clearing out, which completely broke the UI. The beginning part was also a struggle, “find the shadiest path” and actually turn it into an algorithm. Ranking route options by shade ended up being way more complicated than we expected, and we spent a lot of time debugging the logic behind it.

Accomplishments We’re Proud Of

When we tested Sunbrella around campus, we were genuinely surprised at how well it worked, especially when it guided us through hidden shaded paths between buildings we had never noticed before. Seeing the app find a niche, cooler routes in real time made us feel like the project truly solved the problem we set out to address.

What We Learned

Using GitHub as a team became way more natural. We got better at thinking through problems technically instead of just conceptually. Designing and tweaking an algorithm from scratch was new for all of us. And we were reminded how important debugging, iteration, and teamwork are, especially under pressure. In addition, we also grew our specific skills in creating a website, using APIs, and creatively utilizing data when overcoming the problems we came across.

What’s Next for Sunbrella

We want to turn Sunbrella into a full mobile app and improve its accessibility features like clearer voice instructions and more user-friendly visuals. We also hope to survey seniors and heat-sensitive residents to understand what they need most, and perhaps include additional functions apart from finding shaded routes. After that, we’d love to pilot our tool at senior centers and eventually scale it to larger communities and cities.