BlockBuddy

Inspiration

• Give residents a friendly way to flag neighborhood issues, talk to each other, and see community impact on a map.

What It Does

• Publish complaints via text or camera (AI‑assisted summaries, severity, weather).
• Show complaint markers on a map centered on the user’s neighborhood/city.
• Chat privately, by neighborhood (city+neighborhood), or city forum threads.

How We Built It

• Frontend: React + Vite + TypeScript
• Backend: Node.js + Express
• DB: MongoDB
• Services: OpenWeather for weather and Gemini AI for camera analysis.

Challenges We Ran Into

• Location UX: reliable Canada‑only autocomplete
• Chat threading + privacy
• Mongo schema modeling (messages/threads)

Accomplishments That We’re Proud Of

• Analysis using text/camera to display on live map with severity + weather.
• Neighborhood, city, and private chats

What We Learned

• How to deploy frontend on AWS
• How to use a MERN tech stack

What’s Next for BlockBuddy

• Moderation tools, spam detection, and report verification workflows.
• Add ability for adding media to chats and support for videos in compaints

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+ and npm
• MongoDB (local or cloud). Default URI: mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/blockbuddy

Download & Install

• Clone or download this repository, then:
  • From repo root: npm run setup:web (installs dependencies in server/ and web/)

Run (Development)

1. Start the server

   • cd server
   • Ensure MongoDB is running. To use a custom URI: export MONGODB_URI=mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/blockbuddy
   • npm run dev (listens on http://localhost:4000)

2. Start the web app

   • cd web
   • VITE_SERVER_URL=http://localhost:4000 npm run dev
   • Open the printed local URL in your browser

Chat

• Log in or sign up (now includes City).
• Navigate to Chat:
  • Private: search a user by name, select, and message.
• Chat sessions are recorded per login/logout; logging out calls the server to close your session.

Build (Web)

• cd web && npm run build
• Preview: npm run preview

Configuration

• Server (via environment variables; .env file not required):
  • PORT default: 4000
  • HOST default: 127.0.0.1 (bind address for the Express dev server)
  • OVERPASS_URL default: https://overpass-api.de/api/interpreter
  • MONGODB_URI default: mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/blockbuddy
  • MONGODB_IN_MEMORY default: false. Set to true to skip MongoDB entirely and use the built-in volatile data store (automatically used as a fallback when MongoDB is unreachable).
  • MONGODB_DISABLE_MEMORY_FALLBACK default: false. When true, the server crashes instead of silently falling back to the in-memory store.
  • GEMINI_API_KEY (required for AI camera analysis and the Calgary 311 assistant; if missing, camera falls back to manual descriptions)
  • GEMINI_VISION_MODEL default: gemini-2.5-flash-lite (override only if Google lists a compatible model for v1beta generateContent)
  • OPENWEATHER_API_KEY (optional; if omitted the server automatically falls back to Open-Meteo for basic temperature/wind data)
  • GEMINI_MODEL optional override for the Calgary 311 summarizer (defaults to gemini-1.5-pro)
  • CALGARY311_SERVICE_URL optional override for the Motorola service-definition feed
• Web app:
  • Dev mode automatically proxies /api/* calls from Vite (port 5173) to http://127.0.0.1:4000, so you can just run both dev servers locally without setting VITE_SERVER_URL.
  • When deploying or using a remote API, set VITE_SERVER_URL to the server origin before building (e.g., https://api.example.com), or edit web/src/config/constants.ts.