Unoffcial Dining[MTU] Android App

The official DineOnCampus/HuskyEats app is terrible. My app allows you to view the dining halls' menus without a migraine.

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Inspiration

I have been getting fed up with the DineOnCampus app since I came to Michigan Tech. I have been considering making my own app for a while, this Hackathon has just given me the motivation!

Issues with DineOnCampus:

  • It regularly fails to load menus.
  • App navigation regularly stops working.
  • It will sometimes forget that it has been set to Michigan Tech.
  • And most egregiously, it does not have a dark mode.

The name was inspired by how the College of Computing is sometimes shortened to Computing[MTU].

What it does

It allows you to view the current, future, and past menus for any dining hall on Michigan Tech's campus.

How I built it

I used Android Studio, Java, and (obviously) the Android SDK.

Libraries I used:

Challenges I ran into

Android's approach to screen rotation is still byzantine. When you rotate an app, rather than do anything sensible, Android instead nukes the activity and recreates it. If you want anything to persist when the screen is rotated, you have to save it manually using classes like ViewModel.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

It is a lot more polished than I was expecting after only 36 hours of work.

What I learned

I do not think I learned anything in particular from this project, I was mostly using existing knowledge.

What's next for Dining[MTU]

I will probably keep maintaining it solely so I do not have to use DineOnCampus ever again.

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