PollPulse

The Idea

A modern web application built for the Cloud Computing Capstone that transforms ordinary polls into engaging, visual experiences using glassmorphism UI, real-time data visualization, and an integrated gamification system with badges and leaderboards.

System Capabilities

• Real-time Votes: Live data updates via client-server polling.
• Live Analytics: Geographic vote tracking and charting dashboards.
• Gamification Engine: Session-based tracking issuing Badges (Speed Demon, Globe Trotter) and 3-Day Streaks.
• Cloud-native Scale: Deployed reliably over AWS utilizing 100% Free Tier infrastructure constraints.

Core Architecture & Data Flow

A robust multi-tier architecture hosted completely on AWS. It uses an EC2 web instance strictly decoupled from the managed RDS database environment, enforcing solid isolation principles. Real-time updates push seamlessly to connected clients via WebSockets, instantly populating Chart.js analytics graphs without refreshing.

graph TD
    Client[Browser Client 🌐] -->|WebSocket/REST| EC2[AWS EC2 Node.js 💻]
    EC2 -->|Calculates Streaks| Engine{{Gamification Engine 🎮}}
    EC2 -->|SQL Queries| RDS[(AWS RDS MySQL 8 🗄️)]
    RDS -->|Returns Metrics| EC2
    EC2 -->|Real-time Events| Client
    Client -->|Renders Visuals| ChartJS[Chart.js Dashboard 📊]
                        

The Tech Stack

Technical Achievements

• Concurrency & State: Handled rapid vote collisions ensuring atomic database transactions to maintain absolute state integrity in MySQL.
• Badge Mechanics: Engineered a backend session analyzer capable of distributing badges like 'Speed Demon' or 'Trotter' based on real-time analytical triggers.