MeetUp

Inspiration

Starting out, I was pretty sure I wanted to do something using the google API, and my roommate wanted to do something with discord bots. Although my roommate eventually decided not to participate, i stuck with doing something with both discord bots and google API. I decided to go with what I chose because, since starting college, the whole 'where can we meetup to do something' idea because a lot more prevalent, and I wanted to find a way to sort of automate that process.

What it does

The MeetUp bot, once added to a discord server, will add a few commands to the server. Aside from a few small ones, the main thing it does is allow users to use the command '$meetup' and then input their residential college. Once two separate people have used that command, the bot will use google maps API to figure out a few possible meetup locations that are close to both people (specifically, close to the midpoint between both peoples' location) and will also list the travel distances from each individual to said location. Although this version is designed for residential colleges, it could be changed to fit any collection of locations.

How we built it

The bot is built using python on repl.it, making use of discord's development tools to implement the bot into a test discord server.

Challenges we ran into

Before HackRice, I had zero experience in discord bots and very little experience in APIs (although zero with google APIs). It took a while to figure out how to start, but there were a lot of useful tools and resources online, given how popular discord bots are.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm proud of figuring out the google API stuff, because at the start it seemed extremely complicated. I also was proud of figuring out a system to input different locations and their relevant id codes.

What we learned

I learned a lot about both discord bot programming and google API integration.

What's next for MeetUp

If I had (much) more time, I'd want to redesign the MeetUp system to not be limited to preprogrammed locations, and I'd also want to improve some of the calculations for some parts to be more accurate.

Built With

• discord
• google-maps
• python
• repl