DDS Drop N' Go

wiring of raspberry pi
Drop N' Go
Use RFID to Access the System!
The Camera Module Takes a Photo of the To-Go Box and Sends the Photo to Watson to Determine Whether It is a Certified To-Go Box
The Motor Module Allows the To-Go Box to Slide In
Your To-Go Box Has Been Returned

Inspiration

With the current policy, Dartmouth students need to buy to-go meal boxes at select dinning locations for $4 per box. Unfortunately, students can only return these boxes at those select locations as well. Given the busy schedules of Dartmouth students, we forget to bring our to-go boxes every time we leave our room. This either makes us walk back to our dorms to retrieve the box or pay additional $4 if we're scrunched for time. Our team recognized this problem as a great inefficiency and waste of money. Thus we set out to build automated to-go box pick up stations located strategically throughout campus so that students may return their boxes for a credit, giving them the flexibility to switch out their boxes right at dining locations so that students don't need to remember to bring the boxes every time to get meals to-go.

What it does

An RFID station is provided so that students may tag their ID cards for identification. Once the RFID reader recognizes the student, and places their to-go box inside the station, the webcam takes pictures for analysis. IBM Watson analyzes the image file and determines if it is a valid to-go box or not. If it is valid, the machine takes the box, and updates the database, giving students a to-go credit in return. If it's not, then a loud beep is generated, signaling that the box is invalid.

How we built it

We used raspberry pi as our control tower and attached various peripherals such as USB spycam to take images for the IBM classifier. We used IBM Watson for training to-go box data sets. We used everyday materials to build our machine. And most importantly, we utilized our problem-solving skills and grit to complete the hackathon!

Challenges we ran into

Dragonboard 410c had very few documentation to work with
Electric components were very hard to debug because of little documentation.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We endured! and stuck through the whole night!

What we learned

With good hardware, software can really shine and bring impactful solutions for everyone
A lot of respect to all the engineers in the world for making reliable and stable hardwares