Dr No-Carbon

Cut down on carbon emissions by going vehicle-free! Input your journey and Dr No-Carbon will calculate how much you'll benefit the environment by walking it.

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Inspiration

One of the simplest things we're told we can do to help the environment is to walk more. But how much does it actually help? We decided to find out! (Complete with a James Bond theme because this is 007 after all...)

Pragmatic because walking is a simple solution to help the environment

What it does

Input your origin and destination, and Dr No-Carbon will tell you the impact you'll have by comparing the emissions of various Bond-inspired vehicles. We have also included an environmental charity which you could donate the money that would have been spent to offset the carbon dioxide released if you hadn't walked.

How we built it

Started off with a basic node server with bootstrap html frontend. Then we implemented Google Map API to allow for map display, user interaction with map, and a route finder between 2 set points on Earth. Then we researched carbon emissions of Bond's vehicles, to calculate how much less carbon footprint one would have for walking a distance compared to travelling that distance with Bond's vehicle. We then displayed that carbon emission in terms of volume of grass and cost to off-set the carbon emission. To display reasonable figures, our values display carbon emission saves if you were to repeat this path 30 times - i.e. walk it instead of, say, driving, for a month.

Challenges we ran into

The first problem we ran into were implementing Google Map APIs, more specifically the Geocode API and Distance Matrix API (Props to Raj). We also had issues with API keys being invalid / expired due to its syntax upon usage varying at times. The next wall for us, was implementing the HTTP requests to retrieve distance parameter from distance matrix API, which required 2 post requests, which we decided to put under one async function. Afterwards, our standing mathematician / physicist (Cameron) took on the challenge of writing functions to convert and calculate appropriate values to display. Little bit more struggle with the aesthetics and animations on our HTML page.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Using Google Map API for the first time
  • Using animations for the first time
  • Acquiring realistic values for carbon emission of a fictional character's vehicles through mass quantity research (mainly Cameron)
  • To Sleep during a hackathon (i.e. Coming up with a plausible project idea)
  • Successfully hosting with Heroku

What we learned

  • Basics of Google Map API, Geocode API, and Distance Matrix API
  • Using Jquery and animate.css module to implement animations in our HTML
  • Using Heroku to host
  • And last but not least, how to be more environmentally friendly

What's next for Dr No-Carbon

  • Add more ways to reduce your carbon footprint
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