FrogFM | Devpost

FrogFM on Replit
FrogFM backend on Glide with lat/long coordinates for various cities around the world
FrogFM landing page on Glide
FrogFM weather radio stations around the world
FrogFM weather based radio station with debug output from OpenWeather via StepZen
FrogFM presentation: landing page / app start screen
FrogFM presentation: powered by StepZen, Glide, Replit, OpenWeather
FrogFM presentation: possible future improvements like Spotify/Soundcloud integration, GPS based weather info, wet bulb temperature warnings

Inspiration

We got inspired by the StepZen API resources and initially wanted to build something around travel information (think "Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy") using a mashup of APIs around weather, restaurant reviews, crypto and currency APIs and so on.

After a few days we decided to streamline and simplify the concept and reduce it to playing music ("the right song") based on the weather of locations around the planet ("teleport to hear the local weather").

What it does

FrogFM plays the right song for the current weather.

How we built it

We are fetching weather information from OpenWeather via StepZen's GraphQL platform and use Replit to display various frog GIF visualizations depending on the live weather info. Last but not least we wrap the whole experience using a mobile-friendly web app powered by Glide which also provides a location switcher based on lat/long pairs for various cities around the world.

Challenges we ran into

We started out with a concept that was interesting but way to big in scope to finish within a few days. That said: the StepZen platform would actually be a great platform to build this on (moving the challenge from unrealistic to definitely possible, just a tad too big for this hackathon). Maybe in the next hackathon :)

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Instead of giving up, we managed to pivot into a streamlined concept based on weather and music that is fun to use even over many days. We also think that it provides a good basis for adding more functionality and further API integrations. Thanks to Glide it will be easy for us to add more tabs to the app while StepZen will allow us to add more APIs or perhaps even our own custom data sources (how about recipes that fit the weather? or text-to-speech to make radio hosts come to live).

What we learned

We thought that always hearing the same song for the same weather (e.g. Umbarella when it rains) might get repetitive. We were surprised to find out that some songs can be listened to on repeat and not get boring. Even better: since the songs are unique (per weather condition) and recognizable it becomes fun to look at the weather and to try to guess which song will play before turning on FrogFM. Here the reduced track list helps to make the experience more engaging and social (e.g. guess the song/weather with friends).