RAPID - Retail Android Pandemic Incident Disruptor

API Call
Queue Dashboard

Inspiration

COVID-19. Redefining "normal". Keeping retail space safe for customers and employees.

What it does

COVID-19 has changed everything and we, as human beings, are in the process of redefining "normal". The retail space is one area that needs to rethink the way they operate to ensure the safety of their employees and customers. Team 2 at NTT has developed an idea/application to assist with that. Using Meraki MV cameras and sense API, our clients are able to keep an accurate count of people entering and exiting their store/location. The cameras do the counting while our application feeds the data to a web UI showing the stores capacity, as well as number of people in the store at any given time. Our application also ties in with WebEx Teams to notify employees of thresholds such as reaching capacity, at capacity, or over capacity. This will allow employees to move towards an entrance if capacity is reaching 100% and close doors if capacity is reached. If customers would prefer not to wait outside the entrance we have added a feature where they can scan a QR code and put themselves into the queue.

How we built it

Split the work up as best we could. Abha tackled the MV sense API using Python. Luciano took on the web UI using node.js. Will also used node.js to integrate with WebEx Teams to get notifications. James and myself helped out where we could be as the judges will be able to tell, we have the least amount of coding background in the group.

Challenges we ran into

Two challenges worth noting. First was getting the sense API to work in our environment and second was fixing bugs on our bot when sending out notifications.