EcoQuest

Selected Theme

Clean up your city

Team Members

Diya Dalal
Vraj Mistry
Yash Kumar

Inspiration

Our inspiration stemmed from observing how often local community cleanups struggle with engagement. We realized that by gamifying cleanup efforts — rewarding positive action, tracking impact, and making it easy to participate — we could drive real-world environmental change in a fun, scalable way.

What it does

EcoQuest empowers users to:

Drop pins on a map to report pollution sightings.
Upload photos of cleanups.
Earn points and unlock environmental badges.
Track their progress over time.
Compete on a community leaderboard.

How we built it

Frontend: HTML, CSS, JavaScript
Backend: Python with FastAPI
Database: Google Firebase Firestore (NoSQL)
Maps: Google Maps JavaScript API
Hosting: Local environment (localhost backend and static frontend) We also created supporting scripts to preload demo users, reports, and images into Firestore.

Challenges we ran into

Firebase Firestore integration: Setting up the Firestore database schema quickly, dealing with permission rules for testing, and running into unexpected composite index errors while filtering and sorting user data efficiently. Also ensuring seamless local seeding of users and reports into Firestore.
Google Maps JavaScript API: Handling the evolution of the Google Maps API, especially the migration from deprecated Marker to AdvancedMarkerElement. It was tricky to get clean marker placement, dynamic pin dropping, and intuitive click behaviors for users without breaking the map rendering.
Time Constraints: Architecting a full-stack system — backend, database, frontend, and loading scripts — all within 24 hours while keeping the user experience polished was a true sprint!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built a full-stack functioning prototype within 24 hours!
Integrated real-time uploads, map pinning, dynamic badges, and leaderboards from scratch.
Created a clean gamified UX flow without relying on a login/signup system.
Made a strong, demo-ready project that's scalable beyond just hackathon use.

What we learned

How to architect a fast, scalable FastAPI backend linked to Firestore.
How Google Maps JavaScript API evolved (and the nuances of newer marker handling).
How to manage real file uploads and dynamic content generation in a mock environment.
How important clean UX transitions and frontend organization are for hackathon demos!

What's next for EcoQuest

Deploy backend to a cloud server (AWS, GCP, or Heroku).
Add user authentication (sign up, login, real user profiles).
Improve mobile responsiveness for easier phone reporting.
Integrate social media sharing features (Facebook, Twitter) after a successful cleanup.