GCP Dashboard
Twilio Control Flow

WhatsMapp

RowdyHacks 2020 Project By Daniel Kong(DanDan#9134), Brett Landau(blands89#8127), and Julie Wang(Pikachi#8489)

Presentation Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Ando3zOimNIr1dWuLKkK-L5R2ziN6cjv93gbOtyybmw/edit?usp=sharing

Github: https://github.com/danielkong365/whatsMapp

Inspiration

Have you ever gotten lost, but didn't have enough data to run Google Maps or any WiFi signal around? WhatsMapp aims to eliminate that problem by giving you another way to access directions the old-fashioned way: step by step directions. Throwback to the days of printing step by step directions from Google Maps BEFORE leaving the house. And now, these directions can be delivered to you by text when you need it!

What it does

It allows a user to text for step by step directions between place A and place B using their messaging service instead of data.

How we built it

Our application is hosted on Google App Engine using Python as our backend. We used Twilio for the messaging and response capabilities. We are using the Google Maps Directions API to extract the step by step directions between places.

Challenges we ran into

Parsing the JSON recieved from Google Maps API to look nice.
How to send multiple, long text messages to the same user, in order.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Directions are provided quickly and in a readable format
Getting long directions to send to the same user over multiple texts.
There is no limitation for length of route

What we learned

How to design a control flow for Twilio
How to host a Python backend on Google App Engine
How to enable APIs for use in Google Cloud Platform
How to parse JSON and utilize Google Maps API

What's next for WhatsMapp

Using the Places API to enable a preliminary 'Search for what's near me' type of service
Using the Maps Static API and the Twilio MMS API to send a picture of the directions

Built With

Google Maps Directions API, Google Cloud App Engine, Python, Twilio API

Try it out

Check out our Google slides presentation for more explanations and the video link demo for the instructions on how to test it out! Linked in the Devpost!