GeoStudy | Devpost

Inspiration

For our project we took inspiration from a number of sources but most notably 25Live. We noticed that there could be a lot more function to the app so we decided to create it ourselves. We wanted to create an app that students would be excited and eager to use. We have all had the struggle of wanting to find that perfect study room, especially as a new student, so we wanted to make that easier.

What it does

Our project is a web app which functions as a study room finder across multiple different campuses. We gave it the functionality to have user sign ups to remember your information and your favorite spots you select! Since we incorporated Google Maps, we were even able to allow students to get directions to the spot they were looking for. We also incorporated a booking system to let students reserve a room, or see how busy a room is at a given time. Since you have access to each of these components, students are able to tailor the experience to themselves.

How we built it

We put the data with each school’s study spots in a DynamoDB database, which was imported from a CSV file on an S3 bucket, and used an API Gateway with a Lambda function to retrieve all the study spots and their information to connect it with React. We then display the information both on a list page and using Google’s API to show the locations on a live map. From there, it allows you to get directions from Google Maps. It also uses Cognito for users to log in and favorite and book study spots. We deployed the application on a cloud-based platform for web applications called Netlify. This also allows for CI/CD production to make live updates to our application.

Challenges we ran into

We had some difficulties with a couple of areas within our project. We had to work through many different areas of AWS as many of our team members were new to a lot of technologies. When working on our project we also had difficulty creating a streamlined workflow in github.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our ability to be able to implement multiple different AWS programs and libraries and having them all be able to mesh together and be deployable on a web server. Also being able to get this all done and implemented in 24 hours is amazing.

What we learned

We learned a lot during the duration of the project. Our team was able to learn a lot more about different areas like front end development and AWS features like DynamoDB. We learned how to work efficiently and effectively with each other.

What's next for GeoStudy

Expand to more universities in the Lehigh Valley. Direct integration with university room booking systems. "Study Buddy" feature to see where friends are studying