GrassQuest

Links

• https://github.com/Yohello1/HawkHack - Github Link
• https://touchgrassdont.study - GoDaddy Domain

Inspiration

We were very frustrated with the fact that the average university student, particularly CS students, do not get enough sunlight or outdoor activity. This means many students are missing out on exploring the campus, city, and its vibrant attractions. GrassQuest encourages students to venture beyond their usual campus spots by verifying user-submitted photos with the actual locations to ensure they visit these areas. Users can compete in monthly and yearly leaderboards, fostering friendly competition among friends as they share their scores and challenge each other.

What it Does

GrassQuest is an app that selects a nearby tourist spot or monument for users to find. The goal is for users to guess the location, take a picture of it, and submit it to the app to earn points. If users get stuck, they can receive hints to help guide them. Users can also input their name and important information to share with others on the platform.

How We Built It

Frontend - Our frontend is built with ReactJS, Tailwind, and HTML/CSS.

Backend - Our project uses Node.js and Express.js as the foundation, along with additional libraries like socket.io for seamless client-server communication. The backend efficiently handles tasks such as generating new challenges, updating user points, and managing the leaderboard.

Database - We use MongoDB to store user information and other necessary data for the app.

Challenges We Ran Into

One of the biggest challenges was that none of us were truly proficient in all the technologies we used, which required us to quickly learn and apply them to our project. Additionally, collaborating among four people was not easy, and we made some mistakes that disrupted the codebase. However, we were able to recover and complete the project successfully.

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

We are proud of the project we created during this hackathon. Throughout the event, my team learned to collaborate effectively, transforming a raw idea into a complete project within 36 hours of hard work. We also explored various unique technologies to develop new skills. With GrassQuest, our main goal was to help people discover new places they might not have visited otherwise.

What We Learned

• Collaborating and communication in a team
• Using MongoDB Atlas for database
• Getting familiar with MERN tech stack, as well as knowing some libraries that help simplifying during the coding section.
• How to connect distinct technologies together in a single project

What's Next?

We are planning on developing a game for multiple of players can play together to create some competitiveness that encourages other people to go work out. In addition, we also plan to research some Google API to enlarge our challenge database base on where the user is currently at.