TAMU Connect

Inspiration

Why does everyone use google maps? Because, it does all the background work with just "From" & "To" User input places. Even though there are sufficient OnCampus and Offcampus buses running all through the day, international students like me while starting at Texas A&M, we had to know the map of College Station well to know a particular bus number going to the destination we had to go. So we thought of integrating the google map features to the existing TAMU bus routes app. QR Scan at entrance of building with basic details around the building would also help.

Physically Disabled people also don't find parking spots near the building which they want to access. We give them Priority Parking.

To reduce the number of cylces getting lost due to forgetfulness can be avoided, if we intergrated the Student ID along with a installed ID scanner near a cycle rack.

What it does

We have 3 webpages.

Asks you for Start Point and Destination locations, finds the route which will take the least time based on the bus GPS Data of buses available. Ex. WEB --> Scandia Apartment . You can take routes 1 & 27 / 1 & 26 / 4 & 26 / 4 & 27. The page returns the route 4 & 26 (time taken: 25 mins), even though 1 & 26 has the shortest distance possible (but 1 is not available for next 30 mins). No need to know the Bus stop names/Bus routes. Just the final destination would do.
Extention to the above page, based on the GPS the page gets your current location and tell you the Bus Route number and times to reach the destination requested.
Allows use to login using UIN and Password at "Find My Cycle" Webpage which allows you keep track from when and where your cycle is parked.

We have ideas for the following:

Use QR Code at building entrance which contains nearest parking lot and nearest TAMU buses accessible.
Extending the QR Code at bus stops to take WebPage 2, thus asking us to just enter destination. In Addition the display device at the bus stops with the next available bus for the route helps us to know if the bus is delayed / we missed it! (Since the current app shows "bus departed" status based on current time even when it is actually not)
Have a Display sign at each parking slot indicating whether it is for Physically Disabled / Everyone. The central control system ensures that always there is a slot available for Disabled. Thus giving the disabled higher priority by changing dynamically the available parking slot.

How we built it

Using C++ we coded the basic templates for Used Account creation at the webpage, getting the bus route based on the destination needed.
Online customized templates available for creation of webpage.
Presentations using MS PowerPoint presentation

Challenges we ran into

The Data Validation part while creating the user account in C++ and finding the shortest path using Dijkstra's algorithm using time as the weight for the graph.
Getting the actual data of bus routes and parking lots from the API files.
Speech to voice API in Python implementation / Google maps API.
The online Webpage templates

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Contributing ideas to Texas A&M Transport Services.
Working towards goal of easy accessibility to the physically disabled people, thus making resources available for all.

What we learned

The difficulties faced by Physically Challenged to access the university resources, visually imparted for accessing the online resources available.
Creating a customized Webpage, first time try!
Learning about about the more about the resources available at TAMU Transport.
Debugging C++ codes within short-time span.

What's next for TAMU Connect

We can extend the webpage for FROM / TO for visually imparted using speech to text processing and searching on transport page and then returning the results in voice form (Similar to google navigation).
Based on Database systems about each individual living place / bus route entered at the page. We can compute the traffic expected and reduce the congestion by directing the routes where less people have signed up.