High-Level Project Summary
Our app is not as complicated as some in the challenge. We took an approach of abstraction: start small and make it scalable.Being in Florida high school last year made us think about a tremendous waste of money due to low attendance 10%-20% while energywise school was working at full capacity. With 237 sunny days per year on average (4th in the USA) using solar energy seems like the best idea. Our app will show the obvious to the people in charge - school should be sustainable. And the first step should be using energy solar . We hope that looking at our data from NASA, school districts administration will take a more serious look at the matter and make the right decision.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Our mission is to equip every school district with the knowledge of benefits and opportunities of sustainability. The first step is to choose solar energy for every school. Next, gardens and farms. This will also be a part of our app.
Our mobile app is simple. But maybe the simplicity is the solution. Sometimes the decision makers are getting lost in technicalities, but not with our app. User chooses one of the Florida cities from the list provided and in return receives clear sky report.
We developed our app in JavaScript using code.org applab.
Our project is in an embryo stage with a tremendous opportunity for scaling. Our plans are big. Using data provided by NASA we will be able to add full weather, water, and and soil reports to our app and make them accessible to school districts administration to help them to make the right decision in the direction of sustainability.
Space Agency Data
We used the NASA POWER data to detemine how quality solar panels in a users city will be.
Hackathon Journey
Participation in NASA Space App Challenge was not planned in advance. We didn't even know about this incredible opportunity until last minute. But we decided to try, if not to win then at least to participate and to learn. And there is so much to learn.
This was the first time we entered the world of NASA data and were amazed at the amount and variety of the information available for us. We started our investigation. It was overwhelming. We didn't realize how little we knew, and how incredibly interesting everything was, and how much we needed to learn in a such short amount of time in order to participate.
We wanted to create an app that will educate the School District officials on the matter of sustainability and specifically on using solar energy. We started brainstorming. There were quite few brilliant ideas, but most of them were way over our heads. We are not a team of professionals. Two high school students and 1st year computer science teacher. We talked a lot, we drew a lot, we scratched and deleted a lot, until we had a clear plan.
We made a decision not to try to create anything complicated, but to make something simple and be ready for submission.
Luckily we were able to work more or less independently and the roles were divided naturally. Without that, mission would've been impossible.
Until yesterday neither of us had any experience with APIs. None. Actually, we are newbies in coding too. All three of us just started coding. And for sure none of us had never ever tried to accomplish such a complicated task. But we did it.
We are eternally grateful to NASA for this amazing challenge. Now that we know about it, we will be looking forward to participate next year and every year after that.
References
https://power.larc.nasa.gov/docs/services/api/
https://studio.code.org/home
https://www.google.com/
Tags
#sunshine, #solar, #Florida, #SunshineGators
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.