Inspiration
Earlier this year I cycled the length of New Zealand as part of the Tour Aotearoa. During my ride I found myself many times with only voice coverage (no data), or on a slow 3G data connection. This experience combined with the fact that my travel SIM didn't come with a lot of data got me thinking about if there was another way to get the weather, find a place to eat or just to see what city I was in.
What it does
Think of Ty like Alexa or Siri, but with SMS as the interface. All the data intensive activities take place in the cloud and only the relevant information you need is returned via SMS.
Ty uses your SPOT tracker to determine your location and provide weather & food options nearby.
How I built it
Challenges I ran into
The first challenge was figuring out how to get location information. The user interface is SMS, so I didn't have access to geolocation like you would in a native app. However, riders are required to carry a SPOT Satellite Messenger with them at all times and it broadcasts your location every five minutes.
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