Demo: <https://youtu.be/cTh3Q6a2OIM?t=2401>

## Inspiration

Fun Mobile AR Experiences such as Pokemon Go

## What it does

First, a single player hides a virtual penguin somewhere in the room. Then, the app creates hundreds of obstacles for the other players in AR. The player that finds the penguin first wins!

## How we built it

We used AWS and Node JS to create a server to handle realtime communication between all players. We also used Socket IO so that we could easily broadcast information to all players.

## Challenges we ran into

For the majority of the hackathon, we were aiming to use Apple's Multipeer Connectivity framework for realtime peer-to-peer communication. Although we wrote significant code using this framework, we had to switch to Socket IO due to connectivity issues.

Furthermore, shared AR experiences is a very new field with a lot of technical challenges, and it was very exciting to work through bugs in ensuring that all users have see similar obstacles throughout the room.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

For two of us, it was our very first iOS application. We had never used Swift before, and we had a lot of fun learning to use xCode. For the entire team, we had never worked with AR or Apple's AR-Kit before.

We are proud we were able to make a fun and easy to use AR experience. We also were happy we were able to use Retro styling in our application

## What we learned

-Creating shared AR experiences is challenging but fun
-How to work with iOS's Multipeer framework
-How to use AR Kit

## What's next for ScavengAR

* Look out for an app store release soon!
## Inspiration

We wanted to watch videos together as a social activity during the pandemic but were unable as many platforms were hard to use or unstable. Therefore our team decided to create a platform that met our needs in terms of usability and functionality.

## What it does

Bubbles allow people to create viewing rooms and invite their rooms to watch synchronized videos. Viewers no longer have to conduct countdowns on their play buttons or have a separate chat while watching!

## How I built it

Our web app uses React for the frontend and interfaces with our Node.js REST API in the backend. The core of our app uses the Solace PubSub+ and the MQTT protocol to coordinate events such as video play/pause, a new member joining your bubble, and instant text messaging. Users broadcast events with the topic being their bubble room code, so only other people in the same room receive these events.

## Challenges I ran into

* Collaborating in a remote environment: we were in a discord call for the whole weekend, using Miro for whiteboarding, etc.
* Our teammates came from various technical backgrounds, and we all had a chance to learn a lot about the technologies we used and how to build a web app
* The project was so much fun we forgot to sleep and hacking was more difficult the next day

## Accomplishments that I'm proud of

The majority of our team was inexperienced in the technologies used. Our team is very proud that our product was challenging and was completed by the end of the hackathon.

## What I learned

We learned how to build a web app ground up, beginning with the design in Figma to the final deployment to GitHub and Heroku. We learned about React component lifecycle, asynchronous operation, React routers with a NodeJS backend, and how to interface all of this with a Solace PubSub+ Event Broker. But also, we learned how to collaborate and be productive together while still having a blast

## What's next for Bubbles

We will develop additional features regarding Bubbles. This includes seek syncing, user join messages and custom privilege for individuals.
## Inspiration

The purchase of goods has changed drastically over the past decade, especially over the period of the pandemic. Although with these online purchases comes a drawback, the buyer can not see the product in front of them before buying it. This adds an element of uncertainty and undesirability to online shopping as this can cost the consumer time and the seller money in processing returns, in fact, a study showed that up to 40% of all online purchases are returned, and out of those returned items just 30% were resold to customers, with the rest going to landfills or other warehouses.

With this app, we hope to reduce the number of returns by putting the object the user wants to buy in front of them before they buy it so that they know exactly what they are getting.

## What it does

Say you are looking to buy a tv but are not sure if it will fit or how it will look in your home. You would be able to open the Ecomerce ARena Android app and browse the TVs on Amazon(since that's where you were planning to buy the TV from anyways). You can see all the info that Amazon has on the TV but then also use AR mode to view the TV in real life.

## How we built it

To build the app we used Unity, coding everything within the engine using C#. We used the native AR foundation function provided and then built upon them to get the app to work just right. We also incorporated EchoAr into the app to manage all 3d models and ensure the app is lean and small in size.

## Challenges we ran into

Augmented Reality development was new to all of us as well as was the Unity engine, having to learn and harness the power of these tools was difficult and we ran into a lot of problems building and getting the desired outcome. Another problem was how to get the models for each different product, we decided for this Hackathon to limit our scope to two types of products with the ability to keep adding more in the future easily.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are really proud of the final product for being able to detect surfaces and use the augmented reality capabilities super well. We are also really happy that we were able to incorporate web scraping to get live data from Amazon, as well as the echo AR cloud integration.

## What we learned

We learned a great deal about how much work and how truly amazing it is to get augmented reality applications built even for those who look simple on the surface. There was a lot that changed quickly as this is still a new bleeding-edge technology.

## What's next for Ecommerce ARena

We hope to expand its functionality to cover a greater variety of products, as well as supporting other vendors aside from Amazon such as Best Buy and Newegg. We can also start looking into the process for releasing the app into the Google app store, might even look into porting it to Apple products.