Study Sphere is a full-stack web application built to provide real-time room occupancy updates to help students identify available study spaces. The project was developed during a 24-hour hackathon and focuses on low-latency updates, hardware–software integration, and a simple, responsive user experience.
Finding open study spaces on campus can be difficult, especially during peak hours. Study Sphere addresses this problem by collecting live occupancy data from ultrasonic sensors installed in rooms and displaying the information through a web interface. The system is designed to be fast, reliable, and easy to use so students can quickly check room availability.
- Frontend: React
- Backend: Node.js, Express
- Hardware Integration: Ultrasonic sensors with a custom hardware API
- Ultrasonic sensors detect room occupancy
- Data is sent to the backend via a custom hardware API
- Backend processes and aggregates incoming data
- REST APIs expose real-time occupancy information
- React frontend fetches and displays updates
A major challenge was handling hardware–software synchronization issues under tight hackathon constraints. Early versions experienced inconsistent sensor updates and delayed UI refreshes. Through iterative debugging and improvements to data handling, the system achieved more reliable updates and improved UI load performance.
This project provided hands-on experience with integrating hardware and software systems and highlighted the importance of designing for real-world constraints, testing early, and making pragmatic trade-offs under time pressure.
- Support for additional sensor types
- Push-based updates using WebSockets
- Historical occupancy tracking and analytics