Wandrr

The Landing page of the Wandrr App
An example of a query, which is from Austin TX to New York
The Suggestions Table, which lists all attractions you could stop at during your trip
Any number of locations can be queried
The Suggestions results are sorted by which Route the are close to
The Landing Page of our Wandrr Website

What it does

Wandrr is a website-as-service with a simple goal: to encourage people to embrace the journey and not just the destination. Imagine the following scenario: You are planning a much-deserved vacation. You likely even have a destination in mind you would like to visit. But roadtrips are much like roses--they may look beautiful from afar, but the facade crumbles as soon as you draw near and try to maddeningly maintain a conversation with one during an absurdly long car ride. It would be oh so nice if you have had the foresight of preventing this dreadful situation and planned an elaborate escape plan.

This is where Wandrr comes in. We're utilizing Googles powerful APIs to give you the ability to generate a plethora of interesting location and points of interest that all are not terribly far from where you plan to go anyways. You can enter any number of destinations into Wandrr, and we'll give you a host of fun things to do that are nearby your origin, destination, and along the way!

How we built it

Wandrr is a website built with a Typescript and React frontend, with a Python and Django backend. We utilize Google's Directions API to get data about the fastest route you could take during your journey, and then pair that information with Google's Places API to get information about nearby attractions based off of points near the route.

Challenges we ran into

Perhaps predictably, the majority of our challenges involved the thing we relied on most: Google. From getting an API key, to researching their documentation and trying to structure the requests correctly. Of course, everything else was not all smooth sailing either. Building a website, no matter how limited in scope, requires a lot of work (and lines of css).

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The brightest moments of the Hackathon most likely came when things just work! Of course the final product, no matter how close to how the team envisioned it at the start, is important but maybe... just maybe... the smaller steps to get to the finished product are more important than the final product itself! Whether finally seeing Google return something from its api after its constant reprimanding, or finally centering that pesky div, the essence of development is about solving those problems, whether big or small. While the big picture and final submission of every project is incredibly elating (and rightfully so), we can not forget the small steps along the way that led us there. We must not forget the journey.

What's next for Wandrr

Wandrr is just beginning its journey into the big, scary world. We have just begun to keep it on course, but it still has a long way to go. The data can be refined further with Google's APIs and through algorithms of our own. We would love to give more power to the user, and implement things like complex filtering on the data Google would return.

The road is still bumpy, so we'll just have to see where it goes...