The old plow

It's very hard to virtually plan a car sharing meeting. Since cars are....on the streets, just say where you're going and a car will stop to take you on a shared ride.

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Inspiration

Remember the stories from old books where people used plows as a means of transportation? Whoever passes nearby this plow can just jump in to benefit from the ride. With The old plow we aim at reviving this old concept.

What it does

Our web application takes the destination of each person, whether they are simple passengers looking for a ride or drivers willing to offer the free spots in their car for people going in the same direction as they are. No prior communication or meeting setting is necessary. All the difficulties related to this organization is avoided. The app keeps track of the moving car towards its final destination, and if it happens to be near the passenger who requested a ride as well, they'll both be notified. A picture of the passenger is sent to the car driver and a picture of the car is sent to the passenger to facilitate the recognition.

How I built it

This web app is based on Mapbox for the position detection and visualization of the path. It also uses the fundamentals of web development to create the requests between the users.

Challenges I ran into

At first, a natural option was to use Google Maps for the position and visualization part. But it wasn't very intuitive to use and it was unclear in the procedure to follow. On the other hand, Mapbox was very flexible and gives a lot of freedom, which was really appreciated as we were about to reconsider the whole feature; implementing the maps feature or not. In addition to this, the communication between the different parts; i.e the sending of the pictures and notifications was not straightforward. We had to come up with do-it-yourself-like solutions in order to encounter these problems.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Reviving an idea from the good old times ! And also the fun I had during the hackathon developing this solution is very rewarding.

What I learned

I learnt that Mapbox is a really good alternative for Google maps in critical times.

What's next for The old plow

In the future, we are considering adding many other functionalities. For instance, we haven't taken into account the number of seats required and the number of seats that are offered. This can be a good addition in the future. Also, old plow can help revolutionize hitch-hiking!

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