CoronaDistanceIOS

Do you find yourself too close for comfort with others during this pandemic? Wishing there was something to help you keep your distance? This app will help you distance like a pro and so much more!

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Inspiration

We wanted to create an intuitive tool that can help its users practice social distancing as well as keep them informed.

What it does

Our application uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) frequencies emitted by IBeacons, present in all IOS devices to maintain a safe bubble around them. If someone else with the app downloaded enters their bubble, an alert will be sent to both users. We also used a news api and json parsing to format a news tab so users can stay up to date about COVID-19.

How I built it

We built this app using swift in a 24 hour hackathon hosted by our university.

Challenges I ran into

This was our first time using swift, so we had to overcome a few barriers of entry. The IBeacon was also hard to format, forcing us to make it to only users who downloaded the app would trigger the alert. This makes the social distancing aspect of it less useful, but in the end, it was a fun thought experiment that we hope to work more on in the future.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

For none of us having coded in swift before a couple days before the event, I'm very proud of the result we're able to display today.

What I learned

We learned how to use Swift in a meaningful way, programming an app designed to help people.

What's next for CoronaDistanceIOS

We hope to make the IBeacon work for a wider range of phones and not be limited to only those who've downloaded the app.

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