Lichfield Heritage Tour App

The Lichfield Heritage Tour App represents my most ambitious project to date: a fully-featured progressive web application that transforms how visitors experience historic cities. Built from scratch, it combines real-time GPS tracking, interactive 3D Gaussian splats, location-triggered audio narration, and a comprehensive tour management system.

This wasn't just about creating a virtual tour—it was about building a complete platform that could scale to any city. The app features live GPS tracking that follows users as they walk through Lichfield's historic streets, automatically triggering audio narration and 3D visualizations when they reach points of interest like the Cathedral, Samuel Johnson's Birthplace Museum, and St Chad's Well.

The project showcases my ability to work across the full technical stack: from capturing 3D Gaussian splats of heritage sites to building responsive mobile interfaces, implementing secure backend systems with PHP and MySQL, and creating an intuitive admin dashboard for tour operators.

Creating a heritage tour app meant solving several complex technical challenges simultaneously. The app needed to work reliably on any mobile device, track users' locations in real-time, seamlessly load 3D content, manage audio playback, and handle multi-city tour data—all while maintaining a smooth, intuitive user experience.

The GPS tracking system had to be accurate enough to trigger content at specific locations (within 20-30 meters) while being battery-efficient for 2+ hour walking tours. The 3D Gaussian splats needed to load quickly on mobile networks and render smoothly even on older devices. Audio narration had to continue playing seamlessly as users moved between locations.

Beyond the visitor-facing app, I built a complete backend infrastructure: a secure admin dashboard for creating and managing tours, a driver portal for tour operators to launch and track active tours, real-time location tracking visible to admins, and a MySQL database managing users, tours, locations, and check-ins.

I approached this as a professional product development project. Starting with user research and feature planning, I mapped out the complete user journey: from opening the app and joining a tour, through the walking experience with GPS-triggered content, to the admin workflows for tour creation and management.

The technical stack was carefully chosen for reliability and scalability: vanilla JavaScript for the frontend (ensuring broad compatibility), PHP and MySQL for the backend (stable and widely supported), the Geolocation API for GPS tracking, and LumaAI's SDK for 3D Gaussian splat rendering. I developed a custom audio player with background playback support and created a responsive interface that works seamlessly from iPhone SE to large Android devices.

Each feature was built iteratively: first the basic GPS tracking, then location-triggered events, then the 3D viewer integration, then audio playback, and finally the complete admin system. I tested extensively on real walking tours through Lichfield, refining the GPS trigger distances and optimizing the 3D loading experience based on actual mobile network conditions.

• Real-time GPS tracking with live map visualization
• Location-triggered audio narration at heritage sites
• Interactive 3D Gaussian splats of key landmarks
• Progressive web app—works like a native app without app store installation
• Multi-city support with switchable tour databases
• Admin dashboard for tour creation and management
• Driver portal for tour operators to launch and track tours
• Real-time participant tracking and check-in system
• Offline-capable with service worker caching
• Fully responsive design optimized for mobile walking tours
• Background audio playback while screen is off
• User authentication and profile management

The app is built as a progressive web application, meaning it works across all devices without requiring app store downloads. The frontend uses vanilla JavaScript for maximum compatibility and performance, with careful attention to mobile optimization and battery efficiency.

The backend infrastructure runs on PHP with MySQL, handling user authentication, tour data management, GPS location tracking, and real-time tour status updates. The architecture supports multiple cities, allowing the same platform to be deployed for heritage tours in any location.

3D content integration uses LumaAI's Gaussian splat SDK, with custom loading states and error handling to ensure smooth performance even on slower mobile connections. Audio playback is managed through a custom player that continues working even when the device screen is locked or the user switches apps.

The Lichfield Heritage Tour App demonstrates my capability to deliver complete, production-ready applications for the cultural heritage sector. It's not just a portfolio piece—it's a fully functional platform that could be deployed commercially for any heritage city.

This project showcases my technical versatility: 3D capture and processing, frontend development, backend architecture, database design, GPS and mapping technologies, audio implementation, and UX design. It represents exactly the kind of work I'm pursuing: creative technology projects that combine technical innovation with cultural impact.

The project proved I can take an idea from concept through to a polished, user-ready product—handling everything from heritage site photography and 3D capture through to deployment and testing with real users on actual walking tours.