Title:

Dining Hall Activity Monitor

Long wait times at dining halls are a common frustration for students and staff, leading to wasted time and inefficient meal planning. To solve this, we developed the Dining Hall Activity Meter, a web-based tool that provides near real-time updates on dining hall occupancy. This system helps users better plan their dining visits by tracking activity levels, allowing them to avoid long waits and aiding in more efficient food production. Every 15 minutes, dining entry data is collected and processed by our Django-based backend. The data, which is sent via Microsoft Teams, is analyzed to determine entry counts and timestamps. Since we do not have exit times, we conducted surveys and field research to estimate how long students stay in the dining halls. This helps us simulate real-time occupancy using a randomized "boot time" model. The system offers users interactive visuals showing dining hall occupancy trends, helping both students and staff make smarter decisions about when to eat. In the future, we aim to improve the platform with real-time updates, expand our website to other campus locations such as the Hamilton Rec Center, and add features like push notifications.

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