Timecapsule

Inspiration

The phrase history is written by the victors comes to mind when thinking about archives. That got our group thinking about how history is measured in the major moments. Archives are generally positioned around war, politics, science, and other major social events. We wanted to save the smaller moments, things like going through a graduation book with our parents, old Polaroid photos with our grandparents, or just seeing videos from old forgotten hard drives. We wanted a way for people to archive their lives not only for them and their immediate families but for history. We may never know the daily life of a person in the 1300s but we can try to preserve the day to day of the 21st century.

What this project does

This project offers a platform for people to anonymously post moments of their life. From day-to-day activities like getting coffee, a first date, or life changing events like winning the great CalHacks26 competition, or getting married we encourage users to post their smaller moments in life so history remembers.

Once a user posts a moment it is put on a delayed release of 3months-5years where the memory is left alone. Once the time capsule of their memories is released they are notified through email and given the opportunity to reminisce. Until it is they can see others memories and search through the platform using user generated tags. All public posts conceal the original posters info but offer the moment for others to experience.

We also offer the ability for groups of people to submit their memories together creating their own unique time capsules to remember more than the moment but the people that made it special.

Techstack

Frontend Next.js: A React framework (pre-built structure) that makes building websites easier, React: A JavaScript library for building user interfaces with reusable components.

Backend Node.js: JavaScript runtime that lets you write server code in JavaScript instead of other languages, Express.js: A framework for building APIs

Database Supabase: A hosted Postgres database with built-in features (authentication, APIs), PostgreSQL: The actual database system

Challenges we faced

This was our groups first interaction with this tech stack. Supabase was an incredibly useful tool and the features where great but the first quarter of the hack was spent on configuring it with the repo and making things mesh together. As a group of primarily back end developers creating a user friendly and efficient front end was a major challenge.

Built With

• git
• github
• next.js
• node.js
• postgresql
• react
• supabase
• vscode