NJIT Bytes

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Inspiration

The inspiration behind NJIT Bytes came from a desire to improve the dining experience for students and faculty at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). We recognized the need for a personalized meal planning solution that caters to individual dietary preferences and goals, making dining on campus more convenient and enjoyable, as well as a more efficient and pleasant user experience for viewing the menu.

What it does

NJIT Bytes is a progressive web app (PWA) that leverages NJIT's dineoncampus API and the power of AI to provide custom and personalized meal plans. Our system fetches the latest menu offerings from the NJIT dining services and tailors meal suggestions to meet the dietary needs, restrictions, and objectives of each user. It provides nutritional insights, making it easier for users to make informed meal choices.

How we built it

We utilized React and Vercel for front-end hosting, and Flask (Python) and Google Cloud for the backend. The back-end fetches the GDS menu each morning and is accessible only via authorization at https://api.njitbytes.co. The front-end is accessible to all at https://njitbytes.co

Challenges we ran into

While developing NJIT Bytes, we encountered several challenges. Integrating the dining hall menu API and ensuring it remains up-to-date required careful implementation. Additionally, incorporating Google Cloud Buckets and having a domain name pointed to different hosts (vercel and google cloud) proved to be difficult. Overcoming these technical hurdles was a significant part of our journey.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of successfully creating a platform that combines technology and nutrition to enhance the dining experience at NJIT. We're proud of completing, in just 24 hours, a live application that proves to be useful for NJIT GDS goers. We were able to utilize GoDaddy for domain name registration, Google Cloud for backend hosting (Cloud SDK), storage and cloud task scheduling, and GitHub for seamless team collaboration. Lastly, we incorporated API usage for pulling the GDS menu and getting meal recommendations from OpenAI.

What we learned

During the development of NJIT Bytes, we learned the importance of effective data integration and the challenges associated with building a full stack application in such a short time. We gained valuable experience in designing user interfaces and in interacting with Google Cloud.

What's next for NJIT Bytes

The future of NJIT Bytes involves expanding the platform's features and reaching a wider audience. We aim to continually improve the AI's meal recommendations, and we plan to add other NJIT eateries in the future. Additionally, we intend to add push notifications for meals and favorite foods. NJIT Bytes has the potential to become a valuable tool for the NJIT community, and we look forward to its continued growth and development.

Built With

Submitted to

HackNJIT 2023

Created by

I worked on the backend, creating a large part of the python flask application. I also worked on deployment to Google Cloud, incorporating Google Bucket Storage for the menus and Google Scheduler to pull the latest menu each morning. I also configured the dns routing for our domain name (https://njitbytes.co).

Vladimir Gutierrez
CS @ NJIT | Prev. Disney, PwC, Prudential
I helped working on the backend. It was my first time working with Google Cloud and it was tough figuring out how to fix the problems we were getting but I learned a lot from it.

Ben McCabe
I worked on the backend also working with Google Cloud functionalities. These mainly included setting up Google Scheduler to call the API every morning and send a post request to the website route. Then from that route I stored the post information in the Cloud Bucket Storage and grabbed the information from there to display on the front end. This was done to minimize API calls needed and create a more responsive site with faster load times to see the menu.

Andrew Dragoslavic
I worked mainly on the front-end, developing the pages managing the connection of our frontend & backend. I also integrated the OpenAI api to create customized meals.

Julian Lechner