Show HN: Build your own ridesharing, gig, on-demand apps Firebase and HyperTrack

[tulushev]

Here is the source code for driver and rider side apps on iOS and Android focused on live location tracking of pickup and drop. May be reused by developers building ridesharing, gig economy or on-demand (à la Uber-for-X) apps. Rider initiates request, routes to driver via Firebase backend, driver accepts, and then pickup and drop get tracked in realtime via web URL or in-app. The order management back-end is on you. Disclaimer: though apps are open source, location tracking is powered by HyperTrack SDK/APIs, which you need to pay for after 14-day free trial.

[akishinevsky]

How quickly do I get to see my driver's most recent location to show up in my rider's app? Is it as good as Uber's or faster?

[agraebe]

The driver locations show up just as fast. Every location is processed and improved on the platform to improve accuracy and reliability

[prateeks]

Pretty cool! Any plans for some aggregate product metrics like rides completed per day etc

[agraebe]

The app uses HyperTrack, which has a dashboard for aggregate trip metrics and individual trip summaries

[thesanerguy]

Any live production app that was able to use this code base and build their own app finally? Wondering how easy it is for someone to take this production.

[agraebe]

This is a new repo. Various users from early startups to large public companies have in-production apps built with HyperTrack. That said, users can use this open source app with their own live location platform and take it to production outside of HyperTrack.

[kishanht]

Is there a demo I can use without building the source code?

[agraebe]

We don't have the sample apps on the App/Live stores right now. It's very easy to spin up your own app, though. Will explore if we can provide the apps through stores so you can try them quickly without building the sources yourself

[ilaksh]

What's the advantage of using HyperTrack over directly calling Google Map APIs with your own account?

[tulushev]

To build ridesharing apps, you must get driver locations from Android/iOS, and use Google Maps API to get routes/ETA/map experience. All the device-to-cloud glue in between is on you. HyperTrack does that.

[agraebe]

If your ridesharing app requires getting/managing your driver's location data in the cloud, HyperTrack does that. Google Maps does not.

[aussieguy1234]

Uber needs some competition, hopefully this will lead to a better deal for drivers and riders

[kdeorah]

Bike-pooling and carpooling are taking off quite a bit in Asia (at the expense of Uber). Scooters and bikes are doing well in US and EU. There are more apps to be built for sure... It's the beginning, not the end.

[overcast]

Competition? There are lots of competing products around the world.

[deniszpua]

Is it vanilla rider-driver matcher or has some cherries like routes, timing etc?

[tulushev]

In this sample driver can choose the rider. Routes and ETAs are handled by Firebase Cloud Functions that call HyperTrack APIs.

[theyoungwolf]

does this scale?

[agraebe]

It does! We built the whole platform using serverless on AWS. We wrote about it here: https://hypertrack.com/blog/2019/07/11/how-we-built-a-server.... It's been validated by many customers and scales up and down easily.