slacker-tracker

by Jiayu Lu, Dezhi Ren, and Andrew D’Amario © CSCC09 Project ~ Summer 2022

Project Description

Demo link: https://youtu.be/qPEEWPazE-k

It will never leave you lacking... if you be slacking, it be tracking... so get hacking!

Many of us (especially computer science students) suffer from spending too much time on the computer which is very bad for our health. Moreover, we often find ourselves wasting too much time on the computer, gaming or doing something recreational like social media, rather than the work we should be doing... and for some, they work too much and don't take the breaks they should. slacker tracker is a Full-stack Web Application that helps you track the amount of time you spend, working, gaming, and offline. Using the optimal ranges (with respect to healthy living) of times we should be spending doing these things every week, slacker tracker helps you see if you have a healthy balanced life or not. When you are working on the computer, run the work timer. When you are gaming (recreating on the computer), run the play timer. When you are off the computer (the app is closed), it keeps track of your offline time. Lastly, to make sure you don't cheat, you have an hour’s leeway of unallocated time when you are on your computer (app is open) but haven't started the play or work timer.

If at the end of the week you have spent an acceptable amount of time doing each of these things, your slacker tracker score will increase, if not, it will decrease. In this way you have accountability with the friends in your group who can see how well (or not) you are doing this week, and how high or low your slacker tracker score is (how well users have been managing their time in general). So friends can help each other stay on track and live happier, healthier, and more balanced lives!

Optimal Ranges per week

• 30 <= work <= 60
• 3 <= game <= 20
• 90 <= offline <= 120
• unallocated_optimal <= 1

Challenge Factor

• Oauth: email confirmation and Google sign in.
• Non-trivial frontend: 3D bar graphs with gradient color calculated based on the optimal ranges for each category, animated wobble hover, and realtime height updates based on the currently running timer for the current user and their friends.
• Websocket: real-time interactions of current status (online/offline) and current running timer of friends.
• Service workers: send email of user's information and automatically update slacker score every Monday.
• Nginx as proxy server.

Beta version

• User authentication, username and password sign up and sign in.
• Adding friends (two way adding and accept friends).
• Starting/stopping work or school timer.
• Seeing your friends statistics.

Final version

• Add user details: name and slacker-tracker score.
• Automatic light/dark mode matching system theme.
• Seeing friends 3D weekly bar graph of their time allocation summary.
• Offline time is calculated when the app is not open i.e. not on your computer, and unallocated time when you are running any timer.
• Created docker container for backend and frontend.

NOTE: There are newer features and improvements which we have implemented that are listed here, but we were not able to deploy them given time constraints. Please demo the app on localhost to see them.

Technology Stack

Frontend: React.js, MaterialUI

Backend: Nodejs, GraphQL

Database: MongoDB

Deployment

AWS with Ubuntu VM and Docker at www.slackerstracker.com.

Development

Running our app for development.

Clone our repository and enter into it.

git clone https://github.com/UTSCC09/project-cloud-developer.git
cd project-cloud-developer

Install node modules:

cd slacker-tracker && npm i
cd frontend && npm i --force
cd ../backend && npm i
cd ..

Run:

npm start

Now our app is accessible at http://localhost:3000.

Docs

Visit api docs at http://localhost:3000/api-docs.

Screenshots

Display friends' running timers and statistics.

Automatic light/dark mode.