YardScout

Inspiration

What it does

How we built it

Inspiration

Every weekend, handwritten cardboard signs pop up on street corners advertising yard and garage sales. While thrifting and finding hidden gems in the neighborhood is exciting, tracking down where and when sales happen is chaotic and inefficient. We wanted to modernize the neighborhood garage sale tradition—replacing vague roadside signs and fragmented social media posts with an interactive, real-time map that connects local sellers with bargain hunters.

What it does

YardScout makes discovering and hosting garage sales simple:

• Interactive Map & Discovery: Browse active and upcoming garage sales nearby with clear pins, dates, times, and item categories.
• Easy Listing Creation: Hosts can quickly post their sale location, dates, photos, and featured items.
• Smart Filtering & Routing: Shoppers can filter listings by proximity, date, or item types to easily plan their weekend treasure hunts.
• Secure Authentication: Users can log in smoothly to manage, update, or remove their own active listings.

How we built it

• Backend: Built with Python and Flask to provide clean RESTful API endpoints for managing listings and user profiles.
• Database: PostgreSQL to store structured sale details, geolocations, and timestamps reliably.
• Authentication: Integrated Google OAuth for seamless, secure sign-in without clunky registration friction.
• Frontend / Mapping: Map interface built using Leaflet / Google Maps API to render responsive markers, popup summaries, and route previews.

Challenges we faced

• Geocoding & Accuracy: Handling free-form user addresses and accurately translating them into map coordinates with appropriate boundary validations.
• Temporal Data Management: Designing clean database logic so listings automatically transition from upcoming to active, and cleanly expire once the sale weekend concludes.
• Streamlined UX: Balancing a rich feature set (photos, tags, hours) with a dead-simple submission form so busy sellers can post in under two minutes.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Delivering a fluid, responsive map experience that immediately answers "What's happening around me this weekend?"
• Implementing smooth OAuth authentication alongside persistent relational data storage.
• Building a tool that genuinely solves a real, hyper-local community coordination problem.

What we learned

• Best practices for designing geospatial database queries and optimizing API payloads for map rendering.
• Structuring modular backend routes and secure session handling with OAuth.
• How much small UI/UX friction points impact whether users actually complete posting local listings.

What's next for YardScout

• Route Optimization: Multi-stop route planning so thrifters can map the shortest drive across 5+ sales in one morning.
• Item-Level Search: Searching specifically for keywords like "vinyl", "tools", or "vintage games" across nearby active listings.
• Push Notifications: Optional neighborhood alerts when new sales are scheduled near you. ## Challenges we ran into

Built With

• flask
• googleoauth
• html
• javascript
• postgresql
• python
• restapi