Building a Real-Time Carpooling App with AWS

Inspiration

We set out to show how AWS’s serverless ecosystem can turn a simple idea like campus carpooling into a scalable, cost-effective solution. This blog details our journey of building RU Carpooling with real-time performance and minimal overhead.

What It Does

The blog focuses on how an event-driven AWS architecture (Lambda, DynamoDB, Cognito, EventBridge) delivers real-time ride matching, secure authentication, and seamless notifications, all without managing traditional servers.

How We Built It

In our write-up, we explain combining Lambda for backend logic, API Gateway for requests, DynamoDB for geohash-based storage, and Cognito for NetID verification. EventBridge orchestrates notifications, illustrating a fully serverless design.

Challenges We Ran Into

We discuss optimizing geohash lookups, managing Lambda dependencies, and conducting limited-scale tests with minimal resources, showing real-world lessons for building AWS applications on a student budget.

Accomplishments That We’re Proud Of

Our blog highlights how we achieved near-instant searches keeping latency (<1s), integrated AI features like speech-to-text, and kept costs low by leveraging pay-as-you-go AWS services.

What We Learned

We discovered that AWS’s serverless tools reduce infrastructure overhead, simplify authentication, and streamline event-based workflows, making them ideal for hackathon projects and beyond.

What’s Next for Serverless Carpooling AWS Application

Looking ahead, the blog outlines plans to add AWS Step Functions for multi-step routes, advanced driver validation, and real-time fare calculations, continuing to showcase AWS’s flexibility and innovation potential.

Built With

• amazon-web-services
• aws-cognito
• aws-lambda
• aws-sns
• hashnode