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DigitalFootprint.earth is a project I started working on together with [@samlarsendisney](https://twitter.com/samlarsendisney) for the Esri X TechCrunch Hack for a Sustainable Future.

Esri and TechCrunch called on developers around the world to imagine new approaches to the most pressing global challenges, from the climate crisis to COVID-19. All participants were given free access to Esri's [ArcGIS platform](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfX8MIvapT0) to biuld their projects and the winners were announced at TechCrunch Disrupt's 2021 conference.

As web developers, we care deeply about the web and the impact it has on society. We wanted to make this hack about a sustainable future personal.

By trying to improve the performance of our personal sites by peaking through lighthouse audits, we realised far more data was transferred when a page loads than we thought. Every byte of energy sent requires energy, which in turn produces CO2 and other greenhouse gases. With billions of people and pages on the web it became clear, that the tool we love the most ~the internet~ was doing a lot of harm to our planet.

According to the BBC, the internet is responsible for [nearly 3.7% of all global CO2 emissions](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200305-why-your-internet-habits-are-not-as-clean-as-you-think). Another study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) estimates that the internet produces almost [1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases each year](https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-the-internet/). The scale of this problem is scary because when you think twice about these numbers, its clear that the environmental impact of the internet parallels that of plastic. The cloud where we store our data has a physical presence in thousands of data centres around the world.

To make things worse, the internet isn't put under nearly the same amount of scrutiny or the same standards as continue to try to achieve the United Nation's 2025 Sustainability Goals. We can do a lot better.

## What does it do?

Our project submission, DigitalFootprint.earth, uses mathematics and ESRI's mapping APIs to estimate and visualize the carbon footprint of the web. We split our project into three parts:

1. _Story Telling_: By using ESRI's ArcGIS API, DigitalFootprint.earth takes seamingly meaningless data and translates it into a tangible story that shows how serious the impact of the internet can be on our planet.
2. _Investigation_: DigitalFootprint.earth investigates a site's hosting, CDN, performance and size to suggest improvement mechanisms and simple steps to make the internet a greener place.
3. _Auditing_: By using DigitalFootprint.earth's web application and API, developers can consistently monitor and improve their site's performance, CDN response time, and other metadata via our scoring system. We also created a custom server-side-generated badge that can be displayed on a website to demonstrate to users that the developers are holding themselves accountable to ensuring their site is as green as can be.

This project was built over three weeks and there are a number of assumptions in the calculations though they provide a good starting point for any investigations!

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## Challenges

We ran into a number of challenges during this hackathon but I think that's part of what makes the experience so memorable - transforming an idea from something we thought to be impossible into a product people could actually use and maybe even benefit from! Some of these main challenges were:

- _Working with a brand new API_: Esri's ArcGIS API was new to both of us and it was incredibly extensive. With such a large feature set things felt overwhelming at first and some parts of the API such as the service area API proved to be particularly tricky to get our heads around.
- _Using ArcGIS with Gatsby_: We wanted to use a framework like Gatsby or Next for this project (we used Gatsby for this one!) and the SSR that it utilises didn't work nicely out of the box with the ArcGIS maps. This meant we had to make some interesting modifications to lazy load in the map and use framer motion to make the transition more graceful.
- _Generating badges on the server_: It's not the most immediately obviously complicated task but generating images on a server - with out the DOM - was not easy because of how the HTML had to dynamically update based on the request parameters.
- _Data sourcing_: Collecting data to substantiate a lot of the calculations, insights and findings and to integrate these with our tools was one of the biggest challenges.

## TechCrunch

We got the opportunity to present this project at [TechCrunch Disrupt 2021](https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/18/users-guide-to-techcrunch-disrupt-2021) on the main stage in the finale of the competition! The image below is a screenshot from the moment when we found out that, to my disbelief, our project won the competition and took home the $10,000 prize and got the opportunity to present at Esri's Developer summit in 2022 too!

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## BONUS: What else can I do today to reduce my digital footprint on the web?

If you don't host your own site, that doesn't mean that there's nothing you can do to help reduce your carbon footprint through your internet usage. Here's a short list of some other small steps you can take that can go a long way toward helping our planet:

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- _Keep your hardware longer_: the devices you access the internet through, whether its your laptop, phone or tablet have a heavy environmental footprint both through their manufacturing processes, day-to-day use and disposal.
- _Delete your old emails_: storing large amounts of data can also increase your digital footprints. Deleting those emails you haven't looked at or used for years can go a long way toward reducing the impact you have on the environment
- _Unsubscribe_: Email subscriptions and mailing lists produce a lot of CO2. Unsubscribing from the email lists that you don't read instead of letting them pile up in your inbox is another quick step you can take to be a greener citizen of the internet

## Try it out today!

At the time of publishing this post, DigitalFootprint.earth is still live. Why not try it out today by clicking [here](https://DigitalFootprint.earth)

You can also read more about the project in detail on the [DevPost submission](https://devpost.com/software/digitalfootprint-earth)!


Brings the impact you have when using the internet to life through interactive storytelling using maps

DigitalFootprint.earth


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[Dominate.codes](https://dominate.codes) is an online multiplayer game that challenges you to solve computer science questions both against time and other players in real time. After choosing to sign as a guest or using a third party account, users can elect to create a room or join an existing room using a short code. Questions pop up on the map in random places with different shapes and answering questions correctly colours the map in your colour. The first player to dominate the map wins!

## What was this project for?

This project was built for the Level-Up Society Hack, a hackathon organised by ShowCode centered around levelling up society using gamification. While we originally submitted to the learning category, we ended up winning the overall grand prize in this competition!

### How was the competition judged?

The competition was judged on the uniqueness, viability, gamification aspect, execution and pitch submitted with each project and there were participants from around the world!

## Moving quizzes from boring lists to something more

We've all spent hours doing quizzes throughout our academic lives from an early age. But they were always boring lists.

The concept behind [dominate.codes](https://dominate.codes) is to make the questions more engaging and interactive using information visualization and gamification to present the questions in a conquer-the map format.

### Map and game block design

As the picture shows, we show a low poly, block based map of an arbitrary shape and use custom shapes inside the circles to represent the amount of the map that completion would conquer. Reminiscient of the classic atari games where speed and accuracy determine the winner, dominate.codes puts users against the test of time and with multiple players, let's them compete to win.

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### Custom map generation

Although we started with relatively simple maps with different shapes like in the screenshot above, we then extended the functionality of the site to enable us to generate custom maps using any black and white images. If you check out the site, you should see everything from Pterodactyl's to world maps!

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## How was it built?

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The application was built over two full days of intense, non-stop hacking with: ReactJS, Gatsby, Firebase, TailwindCSS, ExpressJS, NodeJS, ReactJS, and Socket.io.

- ReactJS as the de-facto JavaScript library for building user interfaces
- NodeJS for the server side code and custom map generation
- Socket.io to enable real time communication, multi-player games and enhanced user experience
- Firebase to enable user accounts, SSO, and as a database.
- GatsbyJS as our blazing fast React framework for performance, scalability, security and accessibility
- TailwindCSS to leverage the benefits and speed of the utility first CSS framework

During this project, on Saturday we worked on the question logic and question bank, map interactions, the game loop, ux improvements and branding/design. On Sunday, the hacking didn't slow down one bit and we shifted over to working on the sound design, leaderboard page and integration along with carrying out user testing for a ux overhaul of the game experience.

## User Testing - even in a short Hack

Whenever I'm working on a project - whether its full time, a side project or a hack - I always make sure to remember what we're building for. Engineers often forget that they're building products for others to use so even in this short two day hack, we made sure to carry out a few user testing sessions to optimize the game playing experience and sanity check the product we were building.

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## What did I learn?

This was my first time working with Web Sockets and building a more complex state with the React Context API - I've since used it for far more interesting things but at the start it took a while to get my head around. Working with Web Sockets was a great experience and I've loved working with them since because they're such a powerful tool to have in your arsenal!

It goes without saying but hackathons are such a great way to stay in touch with learning. Hackathons largely made up my university experience and this was my first hackathon since I finished university and from the moment I finished, I couldn't wait for the next one.

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If you haven't already jumped off to try it out and read to the end of this post, please check out [Dominate.codes](https://dominate.codes) and let me know what you think on twitter [@yannispanagis](https://twitter.com/yannispanagis)!


Online Collaborate multi-player quiz game with interactive maps

Dominate.codes


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other content can go here


Everything you need to prep and make the most of your next interview.

InterviewToast


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During my second year at Imperial, we were tasked with a second year project to design a product that ‘solves a problem’. The actual brief was quite vague and when we started, I never thought this was the project we would end up working on.

We began planning this project in early October. Six months later, we developed an end-to-end instant, reliable, and secure super-market checkout system using UHF RFID technology. We decided to kick off our project at IC Hack-2019 and built the first working prototype in under 24 hours, winning the DocSoc’s choice award for “Best Overall Hack.”

After the initial prototype was developed at IC Hack, the system was redesigned according to a new specification with metal beams, and the antenna array positioning was improved based on further research.

In case any of this is a bit hard to picture, here’s a CAD visualisation of what the system actually looked like:

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In this post, I’ll provide a rough overview of how we put this together and try to explain how it works in a bit more detail.

## What is UHF RFID?

UHF RFID is an acronym for “Ultra High-Frequency Radio-Frequency identification.” It refers to a technology whereby digital data, encoded in tags (consisting of an integrated circuit and an antenna), is captured by a reader via radio waves. The barcodes you might have seen on supermarket items before encode digital data in a similar way, but use a visual collection of carefully placed bars instead.

However, barcodes have to be identified by a visual scanner that requires a line of sight. UHF RFID have several advantages over systems that use bar-codes, but most notably the tag data can be read outside the line-of-sight and from large distances (even up to 500m).

## Technology and Engineering

A range of technologies were used to develop both the initial prototype and the final version of our system. The primary objective of the project became to improve customer’s shopping experiences. We achieved this by getting the customer out of the store faster, without the long queue time and stress associated with traditional checkout systems. The project was split into separate subsystems and used a range of technologies, which the following sections provide a bit more detail about.

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### Physical System

Supermarkets tend to have multiple check out gates in parallel and we aimed for a traditional modular design where multiple units could be placed side by side. By using a strong, lightweight aluminium for the frame, we also had flexibility in the design that allowed us to hide wiring and optimise the antenna placement.

The functional operation of the physical system used C++, Raspberry Pis, ultrasonic sensors, laser cutting, 3D printing for motion detection, the physical metal structure, gate system and antenna mounts

### Facial Recognition

By integrating facial recognition, we were able to speed up the payment phase of the checkout experience even further, by recognising clients in a matter of seconds. Given the short amount of time we had for this project and the level of experience we had at the time, we used Open CV for the pre-detection stage and used Microsoft’s Azure AI for customer recognition for the core facial recognition functionality.

### Web Application

The checkout software was designed with ease of use in mind. We tried hard to keep it as simple as possible to minimise adaptation time for all consumer groups. The app was built using jQuery, HTML, CSS, and ElectronJS to provide a robust framework for developing the friendly user interface and it looked a little like in the photo below.

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### Backend

We used Java and SQLite for the backend, which interfaced with the antenna arrays and NodeJS for the server that interfaced with the Java backend and the web application.

## Want to know more?

I tried to keep this post brief. If you’re interested in finding out more about the project, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d be happy to discuss any aspects of the project if you’re interested in building something similar, or are just interested in more of the details.


IC Hack 2019 1st Place Winner

An autonomous RFID Supermarket Checkout system built with UHF RFID

Yannis Panagis

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