Inspiration
Due to the current pandemic and the surging COVID cases in California, we decided to make an application to help combat the spread of COVID.
What it does
Notifies users if they are around or have been around someone infected with COVID. The approximate radius is 9ft to detect other users.
How we built it
We used Flutter for the mobile application views, Node.js for the backend, and Firebase as a database.
Challenges we ran into
Learning Flutter was difficult since it was our first time learning it. Also, getting location permissions was another challenge we had to overcome. For the backend, firebase queries were problematic as it was our first time working with that as well. Creating the geolocation algorithm was another important challenge. Firebase did come with Geopoints, but we ran into too many bugs with that. Therefore, we decided to store our own coordinates and implement our own Haversine algorithm to generate a detection radius around each user.
Accomplishments that we are proud of
We are proud of developing a real-time, functional mobile application in a short period of time while learning many new technologies such as Flutter and Firebase.
What we learned
We learned Flutter, building an application with real-time data collection, Firebase queries, Twilio API, and deploying to DigitalOcean.
What's next for CovidPost
We plan to integrate occupancy notifications (e.g. notifications to find safer places) and predicting safer times to be in particular areas.
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