Busy Beach

The main page of the app shows the local weather obtained from NOAA's api and a scrolling list of beaches nearby (from Google places api )
The Map Screen lets the user find nearby beaches and check how busy they are.
This screen shows data about a specific beach and gives the user the ability to "Go to the Beach".

This app is designed to help local governments maintain proper social distancing at beaches and help citizens figure our which beaches will be less crowded. As summer approaches everyone is going to flock to the beaches and possibly find themselves on a very crowded beach unable to maintain safe social distancing. A massive crowd of people is the best way for COVID-19 to spread and therefore crowds must be limited. This app helps to solve the problem of overcrowed beaches in two ways. The first way is that by asking people to sign in to the beach the app can give state officials an accurate count of the people on the beach, and they can keep the beach from getting too crowded. The second way it helps is by giving people the ability to find less crowded beaches as well as showing where people are on the beach. For example, there is a several mile long beach near my house and this app will let users know which end is more crowed at any given time. It will also give users the ability to plan ahead and know that the beach is too crowded before arriving and give them the opportunity to choose to go to a different beach. I was inspired to make this app because my town has closed all the town beaches because it has no way to ensure proper social distancing.

Making this app was challenging because I had never used Firebase before and had to learn how to do it as I made the app. The app uses a Firebase database to keep track of how many people are on each beach, as well as where they are located on the beach. When the user clicks "Go to the Beach" the app verifies that the user is actually on the beach then saves their location in the database. When the user clicks "Leave the Beach," their location is removed from the database.