Walk With Me

LOGO
Companion View 1 - Idle
Companion View 2 - Accept a Walk
Companion View 2.5 - Online
Companion View 3 - Destination To Walk
Companion + Traveler View 4 - To Home
Companion + Traveler View 5 - SOS
Traveler View 2 - Requested
Traveler View 3 - Companions On the Way
Traveler View 1 - Idle

Inspiration

The inconvenience of scheduling a foot-patrol buddy in the current system, which is manual and pre-scheduled during office hours. This is at odds with the natural demand pattern for this kind service, which is unpredictable and most needed during late hours.

What it does

A real-time mobile app that let's a user see active patrol buddies around them and request escorted walks to destinations - like our favorite ride sharing apps, but on foot.

How I built it

Real-time messaging is achieved through a managed Pub/Sub service provided by Solace Cloud. The backend buddy-matching and persistence services are done with a Node.js server backed by MongoDB. The mobile app itself is built with React Native.

Challenges I ran into

Using a new web framework (Express.js) and DB (Mongo)
Trying to work with lower level system calls like background tasks from React Native

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Getting the core functionality around real-time events and Trip matching to work.

What I learned

How to think differently about an event driven application
Reactive Native integration problems are hard, could be more worthwhile to take the native approach.