Track your SACK

Inspiration

We wanted to make a project that had real-world applications that would affect us all personally. We initially thought about medicine reminders, soil quality, and emergency room overflow. When considering a project to streamline ER wait-times, we were reminded of issues in Toronto Pearson Airport's current luggage system, among other airports globally.

What it does

Track Your SACK is a web-based application that works in tandem with existing airport infrastructure to accurately keep track of a passenger's baggage.

How we built it

We created Track Your SACK using a combination of HTML, CSS, Bootstrap for the front end, as well as embedding Hypertrack's services for the luggage tracking.

Challenges we ran into

Our journey to build Track Your SACK was definitely full of challenges. We bounced through many different ideas and had trouble deciding on a project that we thought was achievable, interesting, but also challenging. When we finally decided on a project, we knew neither which aspect of luggage tracking we wanted to focus on, nor the methods that we would use to bring it to life. Our overall lack of hackathon experience also presented some difficulties in terms of time management.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This was our group's first hackathon. Overall, our members did not have much technical skill or experience with APIs. Also, none of us knew each other prior to this event. Despite this, we managed to come up with an idea and collaborate to make an project we're proud of. We encouraged each other to step out of our comfort zones and prior knowledge and had each learned new skills. 3 of our members did not know how to use HTML before HTN 2022, but us HTML rookies managed to create a working interface.

What we learned

Through this project, we learned how to use new skills, languages, and APIs. We also learned the important lesson that even if something didn't end up contributing to the final product, it was still a valuable experience. We had spent some time learning and experimenting with React.js, but we later figured out more efficient ways of building our program. However, our time spent was not wasted as we had gained insights into a new area of use.

What's next for Track Your SACK

We want to get full functionality out of our product, so fully integrating order status with our website is a priority. We would also like to refine the UI and potentially look into collaborating with airports, train stations, and more.