Tinker Depot

Where creativity 🌟 meets community 🫂.

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💡 Inspiration

We wanted to take a twist on the theme “Chat Hacks” and make it about community driven and instant approach chat-centric based project 🫂

  • It all started with a simple question: how can we make the process of starting a new hobby or project more fun, interactive, and community-driven? 🤝

  • We've all been there - starting something new with excitement and anticipation, only to realize that we need more guidance, support, and inspiration to take it to the next level 😕

  • Hence, we wanted to make a hub where just like how I’d text my friend for help with my homework, I could chat with someone immediately for my Arduino project ✨

  • Thus, we created Tinker Depot - a community-oriented, chat-based platform that brings together like-minded individuals who share a passion for DIY projects and hobbies ✂️. We were inspired to build this platform because we noticed that many online tutorials lack a holistic approach and do not provide enough information to help beginners and hobbyists get started with their projects or to take it further📝.

  • To make the experience more personal and increase the communication among the members. We wanted the users to be able to chat about their hobbies 🧶 and start their hobby project along with the community via group chats (working on the same project) or get direct help via video calling the creator of a certain project, or just stroll around and check out other chat threads regarding various hobbies across various domains through chatting threads. This then made us realize how much communication and collaboration is important 🤝

  • Whether you're a seasoned DIY enthusiast or just starting out, Tinker Depot is here to help you unleash your creativity and have fun along the way. Not all collaborations can be done physically, especially when it comes to hobby projects, that’s where Tinker Depot comes in with a one-stop Depot full of ideas to tinker on while bridging the gap of communication. 🎨

💫 What it does

We made sure that Tinker Depot integrates useful features and houses everything one would need so that the user would not have to look for anything else! We did this by implementing the following:

  • Video call directly with the project creator
  • Voice calling options
  • WhatsApp chat integration
  • Chat rooms

(PS, thanks to TWILIO) we were able to make it come to life.

🔒 User Verification

  • Tinker Depot provides a secure and reliable platform for users to authenticate and create accounts with the added verification feature of Twilio. This ensures that only legitimate users can access the platform and engage in its activities

🫂 Community Oriented Features

  • The platform offers a dashboard that showcases various features, including the latest trending lives, community chat, and project boards. This allows users to keep up with the latest trends and connect with fellow makers and creators

🎦 Live sessions

  • Tinker Depot has a live session feature that is powered by Twilio, allowing creators to host sessions that many people can join and tune in to. This helps to create an interactive experience that allows users to learn and ask questions in real-time - Notes taken during session sent as SMS - The platform also has a notes section where users can take notes and when the live session ends, it gets sent to the user’s phone via SMS 📝

📞 Creator Hub with WhatsApp Chat integration, Video Call, Voice Call

  • The creator hub is another key feature that showcases the latest projects from creators and allows users to communicate with them directly via voice call, video call, or WhatsApp. This helps to create a personalized experience that fosters engagement and collaboration 👨‍💻

❓ Query room with SMS notifications

  • The query room is a unique feature that allows users to ask specific questions and get immediate answers from the creators. When there is a response from the creator, an SMS notification is sent to the user, ensuring that they don't miss any important updates.

💬 Project chat - a chat room to work with the community

  • The project chat feature enables users to form group chat rooms to discuss projects with other community members working on the same project. The feature allows for both chatting and voice calls, and indicators show whether the group is active or not based on the number of people viewing it. This helps to foster a sense of community and collaboration among users.

📩 SMS notifications for availability of creators, Video Calls, Voice Calls

  • Trying out a project that needs additional and immediate assistance? Our website sends you notifications via SMS to let you know when the creators are available for video call, replies on the Query Room, plus if voice call option on Project Chat.

Overall, Tinker Depot is a unique platform that offers a range of features and tools to help makers and creators of all skill levels pursue their hobbies and passions.

⚒️ How we built it

In this week, we used NextJS v12, which is the latest stable version from NextJS. This week we tried using tRPC, which has become very much popular recently. The typesafety if provides is chefs kiss 🧑‍🍳 , This week our DX with all the tools was pretty neat. Tailwind css, tRPC, NextJS and Twilio, all combined together work very neat,. And along with Twilio having amazing documentation, they also had blogs to make us understand how things work under the hood. 🐥

We used Vercel to host our web application, which helped us debug, and deploy the code as soon as we pushed it on github.

  • Next.js
  • Prisma
  • PlanetScale
  • tRPC
  • TailwindCSS

We also integrated multiple TWILIO features like:

  • Twilio Programmable Video 📷
  • Twilio Programmable Voice 🗣️
  • Twilio Programmable Messaging 📨
  • Twilio Conversations 💬
  • Twilio SendGrid Email API 📧
  • Twilio Phone Numbers 📞
  • Twilio Verify 👮‍♀️
  • Twilio Short Codes 📩

🦾 Challenges we ran into

  • During the development of Tinker Depot, we faced a few challenges that tested our creativity 🖼️, perseverance, and problem-solving skills. One of the main challenges was integrating Twilio into our platform, as it was our first time using this tool ⛏️, and we had to learn it from scratch.

  • We also had to spend quite a long time at night 🌙 trying to integrate the video call feature 🎦, as it required a lot of testing and debugging 🪲 to make it work seamlessly with the rest of the platform.

  • We faced challenges with Vercel deployments 🚀 as they were failing randomly, causing delays in our development process. However, we were somehow able to push through.

  • Furthermore, we had to research and gather the feature requirements for Tinker Depot by ourselves, which was a time-consuming process that required careful consideration of the needs ✅ and preferences of our target audience.

  • 🎨 Finally, we had to design a user-friendly UI that makes it easy for users to navigate the platform, find what they need, and connect with other community members.

  • Also with a lot of power cuts, struggles with internet connectivity, and running our PCs and Laptops on the battery backup, we definitely had an extra unexpected challenge ⚡

💪 Despite these challenges, we remained focused and committed to our goal of creating a fun, fully functional, interactive, and community-driven platform for makers, creators, and DIY enthusiasts.

📝 What we learned

During the hackathon, we learned a lot of valuable skills and lessons, including:

  • The importance of teamwork and collaboration, especially when working under tight deadlines 🤝

  • The art of designing and creating an appealing user interface that is both functional and aesthetically pleasing 🎨

  • How to integrate and utilize Twilio's powerful communication APIs to enable features such as chat, video and voice calling 📞

  • The value of effective testing and debugging, as we encountered and fixed numerous bugs and issues along the way 🐛

  • The benefits of continuous learning and experimentation, as we tackled new challenges and pushed ourselves outside our comfort zones 📚

Overall, we're grateful for this opportunity to learn, grow, and work together to create something truly special. 🙌

🔭 What's next for Tinker Depot

  • Expand our tutorial library with more diverse and engaging projects to cater to different skill levels and interests 🌟

  • Enhance our community engagement features by introducing webinars, and Q&A sessions with experts and influencers 🚀

  • Improve our platform's performance and scalability by optimizing the codebase, infrastructure, and security features 💻

  • Grow our user base by leveraging social media, influencer marketing, and partnerships with other DIY communities 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

  • Integrating a shop for feature that enables one to get items they need on the go through the website 👀

  • Expand our reach globally by localizing the platform in different languages and tailoring the content to specific regions and cultures 🌎

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