Dietbuzz

Inspiration

One of our hackers is a vegan who often struggles with the dining hall food. He thinks some items are good but eventually realizes other options are better. We wanted to create a solution for many diners like him to quickly find the best food at the dining hall.

What it does

Dietbuzz utilizes surveys from diners to showcase which food options are rated the highest. Dietbuzz then sends a notification to all incoming dining hall users and sends a notification to all exiting users to remind them to complete the survey.

How we built it

We used the Python libraries (selenium and beautiful soup) to scrape information from the existing Nutrislice to see what dishes were available on a given day. We then uploaded the information to a Firebase Firestore database and each time someone submitted a review, we updated the database. We also used the native browser geolocation information to collect device location data. Finally, we used an HTML, CSS, and JS web app to display all the information.

Challenges we ran into

It was difficult to remain focused for continuous hours at a time. Secondly, it was difficult to connect the multiple components of the project. Specifically, the location tracking software.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The team was very proud of creating the location-detecting software and being able to send notifications to people 15 meters away from the dining hall.

What we learned

We learned that hackathons bring the team together in a beautiful way. Some of us learned new languages and how technologies interacted. But most importantly, we learned to communicate and work together.