Topic: Climate action
With the increasing demand of disposable cups usage at all NTU’s major events, a lot of voices are raised to combat the high consumption of energy and the emission of greenhouse gases released during the manufacturing processes. The most common reason is people are too lazy to bring their own cups everyday to school.On the other hand, there are a lot of left-over food from school canteens and restaurants everyday, while there are a lot of poors and needy outside who desperately need some food to survive.
Our group proposes a set of solutions to tackle each of the problems stated above. Firstly, we will have a cup/plate vending machine to replace the single-use cup/plate. Patrons are allowed to use our service without paying a single penny. Rewards will also be given to patrons who constantly support us.
Next, we will have a platform for food vendors/caterers to track and predict their daily sales. Our algorithm will help vendors to optimize and predict how much food should they prepare everyday to reduce food wastage. Vendors can also donate extra food to the needy through our platform.
Summary: We have a cup rental machine that dispenses reusable cup upon successful scanning of QR code on the mobile app. We have a scanner placed in the machine to allow users to scan their QR code. We also have a website showing the total points collected for each registered user that uses our services. Points collected can then be used to redeem rewards like vouchers of NTUC FairPrice and so on. The website also features the amount of left-over food in NTU canteens. Caterer, on the other hand, can use the website to predict the amount of left-over food for a day.
Implementation: ESP8266 module is used to communicate and send data between the web server and client server. The servo is used to dispense the reusable cup when the QR code is successfully scanned. The LED is used to indicate that the item is dispensing in process. The data of the user will be stored in the database and displayed in the user's mobile app and website.