Open source native cross-platform mobile application for tracking infections in communities.
First of all, we should do at this time is social distancing, but we can't survive without food so we have to expose ourselves to some degree to get groceries among other essentials.
Going to a public place in these times poses a risk of getting in close contact with someone who can be infected. To track proximity connections we can use TrackIT app. When you are grocery shopping, turn on the app and it will constantly be scanning your environment and stores other devices information to your local database so you don't have to be using celular data.
Anyone can use TrackIT including android users. Your device is advertising itself the whole time you are scanning so this other user can record your device as well.
After you connect to the internet ( keep in mind that app should at least be in the background not closed) the app connects to a server and syncs your stored sessions.
Some days later, you have received notification that is stating that you have been in close proximity with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.
If you receive such a notification it is a good idea to self-quarantine and report your symptoms trough your government suggested channel.
The TrackIT mobile app utilizes Bluetooth capabilities of the device and tracks infections in the community.
When application opens the app it utilizes two features simultaneously:
- Creates a BLE service and assigns a new UUID and saves every service to a local database
- Starts scanning the environment for all Bluetooth devices and saves all their data to a local database
App functions are divided into two separate parts:
- First part is in charge of
scanning for other devices - The second part is in charge of
maintaining runnable service
TrackIT uses Bluetooth to scan your environment. App must be in the foreground for scanning to be effective because of Apple background policy.
The app is built to recognize states of Bluetooth state on the device, where most important states are .unknown .on .off.
App scans and stores every scanned device and prepares it for syncing with a server.
All scanned devices that are stored can be seen under Tracked devices segment in Devices tab.
App stores devices:
- name
- uuid
- rssi
- timestamp
yyyy-mm-dd HH:mm:ss
Syncing with the server is done automatically in the background as soon as the user connects to the internet. If syncing was not done application will send alert to the user requiring manual sync.
Emitting or advertising service is used for a device to advertise itself as peripheral.
Advertising device as a peripheral is important because it enables other devices to scan and store UUID of the advertised peripheral.
The flow of starting the service:
- generating UUID
- advertising it to the environment with unique name and UUID
- storing service to a local database
Every stored service can be seen under My devices segment in Devices tab.
App stores services generatedID to a local database.
server in development
The app will sync with the server when it stays in the background. The app can't sync with the server if it was terminated by the user itself.
For further use of the app, syncing is required.
Application is light-weight because of a limited number of libraries that are used in development.
We strived to achieve as many as possible without requiring an external library.
This project has been completely free of CocoaPods and every library was implemented trough Swift Package manager to ensure greater stability.
User interface stability has been achieved mostly using a storyboard.
App user interface follows Human interface guidelines
- Lottie
pulsing animation - Realm
local database storing - CoreBluetooth
Apple built-in framework
Whole projects have been written using Swift 5.