T.O.M.A.S

Inspiration

We were inspired by the Vueling challenge on the hackathon regarding the past 28th April blackout. It attracted us because we have lived the blackout and felt it in our own flesh. We actually believe this project could help ensure maintainig well-informed the clients during this type of emergencies.

What it does

This app ensures communication between an admin and all passengers in an airport, making it possible to transmit all flights critical data so passengers are informed during a blackout. We used Bluetooth and Google Services Nearby API to create a device mesh, so the information gets transmitted peer to peer between users.

Since we both support Google's nearby and raw Bluetooth, we can guarantee the best experience between android-based devices, but interoperability with RAW bluetooth means that iOS devices (and perhaps even laptops and other bluetooth-enabled IoT devices) will also be able to be part of the offline map.

How we built it

Android Studio, Java, the Bluetooth API (RFCOMM) and Google Services Nearby data

Challenges we ran into

We tested wifi (both hotspotting and direct), but due to android restrictions we couldn't build a mesh network. The same happened with Google Play's nearby communication platform, which we couldn't make it work. At the end we retried the Bluetooth option and we were able to transmit some information.