Road Radar

Inspiration

We wanted to help fix Ann Arbor roads that are falling into disrepair.

What it does

It maps out road conditions as you drive and creates a heatmap showing the hotspots where roads are in dire need of repair.

How I built it

We built a React Native app using the Expo framework and created a backend using Ruby on Rails.

Challenges I ran into

• Google Maps API doesn't allow heatmaps to be embedded in React Native apps so we had to find an alternative solution.
• We had to carefully scope how much we could do to interpret the hardware (accelerometer and GPS) data. There is a lot more that can be done to improve the heatmap generation algorithm. However, we're collecting all the data we would need to improve those algorithms.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

• We were able to really work well together as a team and were all able to remain productive.
• We were able to find a creative solution to our heatmap issue
• We were able to create a simple algorithm that works pretty well to interpret the data in a meaningful way.

What I learned

• We learned how to use and integrate a lot of technologies together. None of us had ever created a native app before this hackathon.
• There's a lot of potholes in Ann Arbor

What's next for Road Radar

• Finding whether or not municipalities would want to use this app
• Recording more data to create a more complete map of Ann Arbor road conditions

Built With

• axios
• elasticsearch
• expo.io
• heroku
• react-native
• ruby-on-rails