FLUSH

🏆 Best Open Innovation Hack, HACKNITR 2.0

Team: @guilefoylegaurav, @AdityaKotari, @Sylamsh

Now harnesses the public data of over 31 thousand restrooms in the UK and Australia!

A Demo can be found at https://flush-app.herokuapp.com/. (This takes a few seconds sometimes when the server sleeps)

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Tagline:

Flush aims to provide quick and nearby access to sanitation and toilets in all parts of the world by creating a map of all toilets and incentivising users to add their own restrooms to the map.

The problems we set out to solve:

Everyone has had a point in their life where

• They require a restroom quickly due to an emergency
• Are in an unknown area but do not know where they can find a toilet
• Are displeased by the sanitary condition of the restroom(or the outdoors if one cannot find a restroom)

Flush aims to solve all these problems by creating a network where users do not need to search physically for a toilet, and also have access to more toilets. This is accomplished by:

• Letting Users identify available public toilets and mark them on the map so other Users can use this information
• Letting Users lease out their own toilets, hence adding to the supply of restrooms that one has access to

Many of us will gladly accept an additional passive source of income. Some of us have spare restrooms in our house or own establishments(restaurants, stores, rented spaces, etc.) where there are many toilets being maintained but scarcely used. Flush allows these lucky people to take advantage of these conditions and make a quick profit, while also helping Users relieve themselves in a state of dire need.

Tech Stack:

• Frontend: React, Material UI, Google Maps API
• Backend: Node.js, Express, MongoDB

Restroom data used:

• UK, where we imported more than 13k restrooms
• Australia, where we found data for more than 18k restrooms

Please note that a local instance without the connection string to our mongoDB atlas instance will NOT have this data.

This data can only be accessed through the demo(or the links provided)

More detail about problems that Flush solves:

• Flush categorizes and displays toilets according to a user's need. For example, females needing female or unisex restrooms, someone preferring toilet paper or a western toilet, etc.
• Toilets are also categorized as ones friendly to the differently-abled, which allows some of us who require special help find the nearest toilet that is convenient to us even when we are far from home.
• One can also lease out a bathroom for bathing purposes(already a very popular idea in some places, with dedicated bathhouses and 'onsens' that one can pay a single time for a single bath, such as in Japan or European countries)
• It provides awareness and information regarding the toilets available, which can be used by organizations to plan and provide better sanitation and pinpoint areas that have a greater requirement of restrooms.
• Last but perhaps the most significant, is that Flush helps in decreasing the instances of open defecation around the world, by providing alternate spots to relieve one self as mentioned above.

To run the project locally

This requires installation of the npm package.

This also requires environment variables in

• the root directory, in an .env file, namely a jwt_secret and a mongodb connection string, which will look like this:

jwt_secret = some.alphanumeric.string 
dbstring = mongodb://user:password@host:port/database?options...

• the /client, in an .env file, namely the Google Maps API key, which will look like this:

REACT_APP_GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY = some.alphanumeric.string

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First install all the dependencies in both the root directory and the /client directory using

npm install

Then run

npm run build

in the /client directory.

Then run

node ./index.js

in the root directory.