Group 6: EXgoblins

Ontario Parks 'Park Mindfulness' project, developed by EXgoblins (#6).

Quickstart guide to locate parts of repo:

1. The /documents folder contains everything related to project planning, team details, D2-only readme, and project reflection.
2. Within /documents/planning.md, the logical structure for the project is laid out.
3. /miscellaneous and /mockup within /documents both contain images used throughout planning.md.
4. /documents/team/Team-6-EXgoblins.csv and Stakeholders.txt contain information on all of the team members making up EXgoblins, and the stakeholders of the project.
5. /documents/README.md contains the D2 only readme.md.
6. /documents/iteration-02-review.md contains our first project reflection as per D2.
7. Meeting minutes can be found at /documents/team/minutes. Two file types are available: Partner-MM (bi-weekly meeting with Ontario Parks Representative, John Leadston) and Team-MM-Stack.
8. In terms of code, everything can be found under /Code. Access the backend project at /backend and the two frontend projects at /user-frontend and /manager-frontend. ​

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Description

In a time where mental health is a very high priority to many, practices such as mindfulness can go a long way in helping people. Forest therapy or forest bathing, as it is known in Japan, is one such practice. The intention of this project is to allow users to initiate guided meditation based on where they are in the park. Users can scan a QR code at a bench which will take them to an audio file for that specific bench, which will lead them through the exercise. From the admin side, they can create new benches, update existing benches, edit the details of a given bench, and they can also delete benches.

     

Key Features

• Users can scan QR codes on Ontario Park benches either via their phone's camera app or the website to access the media behind them. A small preview of the media's album name, author and an album image can be previewed before continuing if on the website.

• Users can play the media behind a bench's QR code to be guided through context-specific meditation sessions. The page displays the album art, author, and will have buttons that will rewind, pause and fast forward the media. The media can be rewinded or fast forwarded by 10 seconds.

• Park managers can make manager accounts for the website, be able to log into said website and get access to manager actions. The actions are listed below:

  • Park managers can make new bench objects for their park in the database. During this creation process, they can upload the audio recordings and once finished, they are provided with a corresponding QR code to place on the physical park bench.
  • Park managers can view and filter parks in the database so they can quickly and easily manage their benches.
  • Park managers can obtain copies of existing QR codes in case the existing printed version is damaged.
  • Park managers can update certain attributes of a bench (including the audio-to-bench mapping) such that the update to the bench is reflected on the same QR code that the bench was already assigned (allowing for printed QR codes to stay relevant forever).

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Instructions

• As mentioned in planning.md on 6-John-T/documents/ there are two sides to our project, the administrator side where mindfulness audios are mapped to benches around a park, and the user side where the users are taken to view a bench's information and listen to the corresponding bench audio upon scanning a QR code generated on the administrator side.
• Please keep in mind that while for D2 both sides of the application are accessible to everyone, the administrator side is meant to be accessed by users with registered accounts only (this functionality will be implemented in the following weeks).

Accessing the Administrator Side:

• As mentioned above, as of D2, this side of the application can be accessed without the need for an account/special permissions, so anyone can access the page at: https://6-john-t.vercel.app/
• Upon first access, you are thrown into a page where you are to select the park that you want to edit benches for (which can be done from either the button or the dropdown). Parks come pre-loaded into the database for now.
• Once a park has been selected you are taken to the page where all of the selected Park’s bench objects are displayed along with all of the options that you are given as an administrator.
• You can create a new bench object for the park you currently find yourself in:
  • Do this by clicking the ‘Create New Bench’ button on the park page, which will take you to a form page where you will be able to upload the bench’s related information (such as the audio, thumbnail, and more).
  • When you are done, you can click on ‘Add Bench’ to register this new object in the database, this automatically creates the QR code mapping to the information that this bench object stores for the users to access through the user-side frontend.
• You can edit and download the QR code for a specific bench by clicking on the respective buttons for each of the instances listed on a park’s page.
  • Editing a bench allows you to either update its corresponding information through a similar form to the one from bench creation, or delete it. Updating does not alter the existing QR code (which allows for the existing QR codes to not become obsolete as their corresponding benches change over time).
  • Deleting a bench from within its edit page, wipes the bench’s information from the database, making the existing QR code for it no longer map to anything.
  • Downloading a QR code lets you access the automatically created QR code so that it can be printed and presented to users throughout an administrator’s park.
• At any moment while exploring a Park’s page, you can switch to another park by clicking on the ‘Select Park’ button which will take you back to the main page.

Accessing the User Side:

• User’s have 2 ways of getting to the information that a bench stores and they both involve scanning a QR code that is to be printed/displayed on a park’s benches/zones of interest.
• You can open up your phone’s camera app and scan the QR code, which will take you directly to the page with that bench’s information.
• Or, if your phone doesn’t have QR scanning capabilities, or you are trying to access a bench’s information from a desktop, you can go over to https://6-john-t-one.vercel.app/, grant the permissions to the website to use your camera/webcam, and scan a QR code using the built in camera, once the QR code is identified, you will see a preview of the bench you just scanned with its thumbnail and name, and upon clicking on the arrow to proceed to the bench page, you will be taken to the page with that bench’s information.
• Once on a bench’s main page, a user will be able to see the bench’s thumbnail, bench title, audio contibutor, as well as a player for the mindfulness audio related to this bench. Users can use the play/pause, and the skip forward and rewind 10 seconds buttons to navigate through the audio to start their Parkfullness Meditation.
• From within a bench’s main page, users can go to the general landing page (with the built in online scanner) by clicking on the Ontario Parks logo on the top left side of the screen.

     

Development requirements

Backend Development Requirements:

Requires the following tool(s):

• OS: tested on Windows 10, Ubuntu 22.04 and MacOS
• Python 3.11.1
• Virtualenv (tested with v20.17.1)
• Pip 22.3.1 (or newer)
• Install all libraries and packages in Code/backend/ParkMindfulness/requirements.txt

See Code/backend/readme.md for detailed instructions on setting up backend development

Frontend Development Requirements:

Requires the following tool(s):

• Node installed

Both frontends use the same tools and instructions. See within Code/manager-frontend/README.md or Code/user-frontend/README.md for more instructions.

     

Deployment and Github Workflow

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• Overall Workflow/Naming Conventions:  

  • For each sub-team (Frontend User, Frontend Manager, and Backend), we will use branches when in need of major functionality implementations. Additionally, we will also try to include the assignment that it is relevant for, the subteam that will be working on it, and the reasoning behind doing so, e.g. backend-upgrades-d2. Upon successful implementation and testing, a member of that sub-team will create Pull Requests that must be approved and reviewed by another member from the same sub-team before they merge with main.

• Frontend User: 

  • We make initial code changes on "qrscanner_change" and merge small changes directly to the main branch.  
  • Deployed on Vercel.
  • See Code/user-frontend/README.md for more details.

• Frontend Manager: 

  • Code changes were pushed to main. When creating larger merges, we created a PR request that a teammate can review and accept.  
  • Deployed on Vercel.
  • See Code/manager-frontend/README.md for more details.

• Backend: 

  • Backend code was developed on backend-upgrades-d2 branch and deployed to main.
  • Railway was chosen for deployment due to automated builds and storage capacity for the backend database.
  • See Code/backend/readme.md for more details.

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D3 Project Presentation

The project presentation slides can be found here.

The slides are also available on github here.

Licenses

• Chosen License: GNU General Public License v3.0
• Reasoning:
  • GNU v3.0 allows us to use the codebase for commercial purposes as requested by our partner
  • Additionally, it allows for modification and private use upon a disclosure and copyright notice while implementing a patent - essentially future-proofing for the implementation of future functionality
  • From a development perspective, we can all contribute privately while others can contribute as well towards features that can be used for commercial purposes by our partner and also allows us to distribute this code to hand it off to the next group working on it (whether that be CSC301 students or other parties).