Developed an application within 24 hours that tracks multiple buses around campus in real-time using iBeacon technology.

The theme of the competition was to create an app that would help Texas Tech University Parking services. We had 24 hours to complete the app before judging. My team won 1st place with this.

The idea is that iBeacons would be placed on all of the buses around campus. When a student with this app installed came in range of the bus (or rather iBeacon on the bus), the app would respond by grabbing the user’s GPS location and storing it in a database. By polling the user’s location every minute or so, we could effectively track where the location of that bus. Under the presumption that enough students had the app, we could have a pretty good idea of where all the buses are.

The rest was easy. Whenever a user wants to know where the bus is, we query the database and return the last known location and display it. The user could effectively see the bus moving in real time while others with the app are on the bus.

What I learned:

• iOS integration of iBeacons
• Introduction to Google Maps SDK and CoreLocation
• Introduction to Swift