“foreCARst” — The current and future costs of your car at a glance!

This project was carried out as part of the TechLabs “Digital Shaper Program” in Dortmund (summer term 2020).

In a nutshell:

Are you also annoyed when you want to calculate the cost of your car, that it is a huge effort to collect everything together from all fuel receipts, bills etc. to taxes and insurance expenses? Or even worse, do you even know how much you spend on your car? If you have lost track of all your expenses and upcoming expenses or if you need a simple application to replace your confusing Excel list with an extra on calculation of upcoming expenses, then foreCARst is the right website for you with a once created profile, easy direct input of expenses when they occur and a user-friendly interface we create maximum transparency for today’s and future expenses.

Introduction:

Our project aims at the fact that most car drivers do not know how much they spend on their car per month and that they often have difficulties to estimate how the costs for their car will develop in the future. Our application is designed to help users to keep track of their costs for their car and also to make predictions about upcoming repairs, service etc.

The concrete problem which we want to solve with our application is the complexity of the costs of a car, and to make the most predictable costs for car repairs directly visible to the user before they actually occur.

Methodology:

In our team of 3 people, Lara Stahl and Sebastian Emons had chosen the Data Science Track and applied their knowledge of Python to the programming of the back end. However, since some areas such as migrating Python code to HTML code were not covered in the track or other applications. So, we had to solve this with other sources, therefore we got solutions for this through internet research or asking the mentors.

Since Leon had chosen the Web Developer Track, he concentrated on the structure and development of the website. For the website code he often used Bootstrap to make things easier and because of the more modern design of the buttons etc. In addition, he used Bootstrap’s Grid-System to divide each site into different parts and to improve the visibility of the website.

At the beginning of the project we identified MVPs and created a schedule for implementation. We divided our work into front end and back end work and had regularly Zoom meetings and discussed problems.

In the end we connected our finalized front end and back end by Flask, a Python module to build a REST API. This offers the opportunity to “communicate” in real time with the information the user types into the form and finally to publish customized predictions.

By now you can start the website via the Python code. The data is saved locally on the used device because we are not working with a server yet.

Results:

Let us give you a brief insight in our website for foreCARst:
Our first page guides you to the right place (figure 1).

Figure 1: Home page of foreCARst guiding to the right tool.

For example, to create a new profile for your car (figure 2).

Figure 2: Entry form for the creation of a new car in foreCARst.

As a result, you get information about upcoming expenses (figure 3):

Figure 3: Overview on the calculated upcoming expenses.

Of course, foreCARst has additional abilities. So, make sure, you check it out on your own!

GitHub repository: https://github.com/SebEmons/ForeCARst

Team members:

Data Science Track (Python):
Lara Stahl (Master Student Chemistry)
Sebastian Emons (Bachelor Student Business and Economics)

Web Development Track:
Leon Habbes (Bachelor Student Industrial Engineering)