WaveIt

WaveIt uses sound wave technology to provide the fastest cross-platform file and data transfer solution.

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Inspiration

WaveIt revolves around everyone's daily inconvenience of URL links. We have all experienced the franticness of having to copy down links during presentations which often resorts to taking a picture that is forgotten with tens of others. We also have experienced a parallel to this issue when transferring files and data. Whether it be from one person to another, one person to a group of people, a presenter to their audience, or a smartphone to a computer and vice-versa, data and file transfer has always been a hassle. It typically involves steps such as e-mailing, uploading to the cloud and sharing a link, or syncing up with bluetooth. It only makes sense that there exist a solution that streamlines this process for ALL devices.

WaveIt Overview

WaveIt is a suite of applications running on different devices that uses sound wave technology to provide cross-platform file and data transfer. Our application embraces simplicity with its two-page design of switching between _ "Sending a Wave" _ and _ "Receiving a Wave" _.

Sending a Wave

Sending of Waves works by the user selecting a file from their system and uploading it to the application. WaveIt then persists a temporary instance of the file on our database. A unique audio code (~ 2 seconds) is also generated and played through the device's speakers to broadcast to anyone within range of the sound waves.

Receiving a Wave

Receiving of Waves is an automatic background service within the application that passively listens for the unique audio codes generated by other users. When the WaveIt picks up a code, it retrieves the file from the server and allows the user to view the file and download it with a single click of a button.

Business Validation

The main features of WaveIt are its simplicity, agnosticity to devices, mass communication capability, and its solid reliability.

WaveIt offers a strong competitive advantage over other similar alternatives. Some alternatives include Android Beam, Apple AirDrop, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Email. Android Beam and Apple AirDrop provide similar services to each other of fast transfering of files. The only caveat is that they only support their own devices, which creates hassle transferring files between different devices. WaveIt addresses this problem as it is available on a variety of platforms. The other alternatives are all services that support any devices, but they require link sharing and greater effort to transfer the file. WaveIt overcomes this hassle by providing audio transfer which only takes around 2 seconds rather than the minutes spent creating links and attachments.

Technologies Used

Within the scope of HackThe6ix, the Android application, the web application, and the backend API service and database were developed. The Android application required Java and XML skills, the web application required JavaScript, HTML, and CSS knowledge, and the backend API service necessitated the use of StdLib, RESTful API, PHP, and MySQL. We also integrated the Fourier Fast Transform Algorithm to precisely convert audio into frequencies, and developed our own algorithm to capture our unique audio codes with minimal interference. StdLib was used to cleanly wrap our API services that are used to communicate with our database.

The Future

The future of WaveIt will be a two-fold operation between supporting more devices and platforms including iOS and IOT devices, and improving our unique audio codes to be faster, more secure, and have enhanced detection.

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