Inspiration
In our current crisis, it is imperative to avoid large groups of people, as social distancing is one of the most effective counter-measures against the spread of COVID-19. Fitting into the theme of mobility, we thought an app that makes your next outings safer in terms of social distancing would not only suit the theme of this Hackathon, but also have potential use in our current crisis.
What it does
Our app, ViMAPS helps you take preventive measures for avoiding large crowds so that the chance of you becoming infected or the chance of you infecting others with COVID-19 are as low as possible.
By utilizing an app user’s location data, ViMAPS can plot the population density around your surrounding area so that you can take alternative routes to minimize infection chances.
How we built it/What we learned
During our time, we used a variety of tools and techniques when creating ViMAPS. Expo and React Native were used primarily for front-end and back-end development. Along the way, we created and used a variety of APIs and algorithms, such as the Google Maps API and the harvesine function when creating our distance algorithm.
Challenges we ran into
Most of our challenges stemmed from learning new technologies and using new APIs - none of us were familiar with React Native and Google cloud, so a lot of our time was spent on reading documentation and learning how to implement the features we want, as well as troubleshooting. Also, with this being our first Hackathon, we weren't really sure how to approach the development of our app.
Accomplishments that We're proud of
We think it's awesome how our team not only learned a ton of new technologies within the span of 36 hours, but used them to build a functional app with real-world applications. It took a ton of labor and documentation reading - we think this app is a testament to our work ethic and dedication to software development.
What's next for ViMAPS
We originally planned many features, but decided to prioritize the map-rendering due to time restraints. Below are features we would have liked to implement (or may implement in the future):
1) Destination booking >Preemptively see how busy some places are, book a visit
2) Show COVID19 news updates
3) Display more robust destination data on search (e.g. open hours, peak busy-ness, pictures)
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