Santa tracker for the annual Berowra Apex Club Santa street run.
The Santa tracker is a simple in-browser javascript app written with vue.js. It consists purely of static files - there is no build process required. The app is deployed to AWS using CloudFormation and served from S3 and CloudFront. Maps are served from some custom Google maps. TLS certificate is pulled from AWS ACM.
When Santa is on the move, he accesses the app via a special URL that includes an AWS key and secret. This causes the app to periodically upload a file to S3 indicating his current position. A timeout loop in the app then constantly polls this file to refresh his location on the map for end users.
You can run the app locally for development using the Python web server app in bin/run.py.
Running this way will generate a self-signed cert for you (Google maps won't work over plain HTTP),
and will provide an S3 alternative for handling Santa's position file uploads.
The easiest way to run this is to use Docker - just run docker-compose up.
After it's started it will print the "Public URL" and "Santa URL" to the console - you should be able to simply open these in your browser.
You will get a certificate warning as the local app uses self-signed certs - just ignore this.
Run bin/deploy.py. You will need valid AWS keys of course.
This script will look up AWS ACM to find the cert and run the CloudFormation stack in cloudformation/apexsanta_template.json.
There are a few configurable params at the top of the file.
The Santa events are defined in site/events.js. Just update the fields appropriately.
Maps were created with Google My Maps. You can draw the Santa route on them.
Then you have to share the maps publically and paste the key into the id field in events.js.