Calvin's Abstraction club runs a soda vending machine in the CS lounge. The soda machine, beloved by Calvin students from all departments, has been outfitted with a Raspberry Pi to read data about the current stock, recent sales, and temperature and display that information on a website. Ben and Darren will be working with Abstraction leadership to provide an overhaul to the software running the Soda-Pop system. The problem we hope to solve is that the software running on the Pi is outdated, the webserver is hosted locally, and there are no means to administer the machine without manipulating the files on the Pi directly. This means the website is susceptible to power outages and data loss on the Pi and the entire system is difficult to manage. The website is also in need of a visual refresh using more modern, responsive web design.
The solution we would like to provide is a revamped dynamic web app for monitoring and administering the soda machine. Abstraction has asked that this be responsive on both desktop and mobile and be capable of displaying the current stock in the machine and the historic purchasing trends. This data will be displayed graphically on the web page to all visitors. We will update the data flow from the vending machine to better align with modern IoT devices. The Raspberry Pi will read data from the vending machine to a remote database, which can then be read and interpreted by the web app.
Ben DeVries and Darren Rice are seniors at Calvin University studying computer science with an anticipated graduation of April 2022.
https://github.com/calvin-soda-2021