Qunect Four

Star Wars on Qunect Four

Inspiration

We came up with the idea for Qunect Four while on our 3 hour drive from College Station to San Antonio. While strolling down Hwy 21, we were discussing unconventional uses for mobile devices and the idea that we could combine multiple mobile devices to form one mega device intrigued us. So, we set out on a journey to create a mobile application that allows users to watch a movie across four devices, with each device playing a specific frame to create a much bigger "TV-like" contraption.

What it does

Qunect Four allows any four iOS devices (so not only iPhones) to connect to a movie "room" in order to play that movie in a much bigger frame. Users place their devices next to each other in grid-like fashion and the app syncs playback, allowing for a pleasant viewing experience.

How we built it

Qunect Four was built in Xcode using Swift for OS development. It also relies on Firebase's Realtime Database to synchronize playback.

Challenges we ran into

Figuring out how to synchronize playback was a big challenge as we did not want users to have to manually start playback. Instead, we opted to have one master user that controls playback for all devices. We also struggled initially with technological difficulties as some devices were not responding well to the database.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the fact that we were able to get Qunect Four up and running on four devices and actually synchronize media between these four devices.

What we learned

We learned that unconventional uses of mobile devices can lead to some pretty cool outcomes. Qunect Four is just one example of how thinking outside of the box can lead to new innovations.

What's next for Qunect Four

Because Qunect Four seemed like such an exciting idea, we plan to continue pursuing Qunect Four after this hackathon and hope to get it published as an app on the App Store in the near future.