Shortcut

Are you frustrated when Google maps takes you on a long detour? With Shortcut, users can map out their own routes and share them with others, guaranteeing you'll never be late to class or work again!

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Inspiration

Our inspiration is the countless times of frustration we experience when a friend tells us about a short cut to class that is so much faster than the regular way, and what's even worse is that we usually hear about only after we're well into the semester

What it does

The goal of Shortcut is to enable users to map out their own routes they use to get from place to place and upload them, allowing other people to see their "shortcut"

How we built it

We used Android Studio and the google map API, with a heavy focus on Java as well as some XML

Challenges we ran into

Some of the hurdles we ran into were making a timer that tracked how long it took for someone to travel, a way for us to upload the path so others could see it, and creating the path that a person would take. Another difficulty was that none of us had a well understanding of XML, which meant we had to rely on tutorials to accomplish anything that involved the language.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One of the accomplishments we're proud of is the solution to one of the problems we mentioned in the previous segment. To create our path that a person takes, we had the app place a marker down every 10 seconds once you press start. And as you move, you will see a pathway of markers that show the route you took.

What we learned

We learned quite a bit, as this is our first hackathon as well as developing an Android app. One of the major things we learned was the use of the google maps API. It was pretty difficult as it was our first time working with an API, and on top of that, it was also our first time really needing to use XML. Luckily, we were able to get by with online tutorials and some great mentors that were available to us.

What's next for Shortcut

We want to be able to implement a way for people to actually upload their routes so that other people can see, however at our current state, we do not know enough to actually go through with it. We also are continually trying to make our timer work, as it will be an integral part of sorting different people's routes, as no one wants to use the slowest route.

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