Inspiration
We were inspired by a pressing and growing problem in our world: climate change. Something as simple as driving to the store releases greenhouse gases, which, in large quantities, have serious effects on the environment. With how many drives are made a day and how many people there are in the world, it is easy to see how it can add up quickly. We wanted to make an app that could allow users to see exactly how much of an impact their travel has, and compare different modes of transportation so they can pick a more efficient method in the future.
What it does
Our app lets you keep track of your walking, driving, or other forms of movement, then see the carbon impact of that journey for various vehicle types. It also displays the path on a map and tells you other useful information such as the total distance traveled and the speed since position was last measured.
How we built it
We built the app in react native on the expo platform. Expo provided many useful tools to help record the location of the user and to display it on an interactive map. By keeping track of locations throughout a journey, we are able to calculate the total distance traveled and the associated carbon footprint for different vehicles.
Challenges we ran into
Getting the location data to be regularly and accurately fetched without fetching too frequently was pretty difficult to do. We also had to figure out how to have the map follow this location data along with figuring out a UI that let users see all the relevant information and perform all necessary actions without the screen getting too cluttered.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of making a system that is able to track the movement of a phone so well, and create a line which actually reflects the path. We are also really happy with how the UI and general look of the app turned out.
What we learned
Some members of our team had no experience with react native or mobile development, so they were able to learn a lot about that process through this app. Even for those who had already used react native, they still learned how to use expo to get the location of a phone, and how to use the map view.
What's next for Transportation Footprint
There are still quite a few things we could do to improve Transportation Footprint. First, we have yet to make our app run in the background; if you turn off your device, the tracking stops. We could also make it more smoothly follow our location as we move, as well as add a button for a free look mode. A major part of the app which would be simple to improve is our list of vehicles. We want to add more vehicles to our list so that we can give a fuller view of the ways your choice of transportation can influence your carbon footprint.
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