This week, I worked on specifying the details of the software implementation. More specifically, I decided on Flask to host our backend API and after further research, ditched MySQL as our database. I came to this decision because I realized that we did not need the database. Since historical occupancy data is only needed to make new predictions on occupancy, I plan on having a local machine (where our predictive model is) fetch occupancy data from the EC2 instance via hourly API call to Flask. This way, there is no need to query from the database and information can be directly sent to our local machine.
In addition to finalizing the specific software tools we plan on using, I also specified how these different software components will communicate with each other. I plan on using WebSockets to establish a long-running connection between the mobile app and the EC2 instance to push occupancy updates to our mobile app in real-time via this connection. Finally, I created an app mock-up on Figma that I plan to follow closely when designing the actual app using Flutter.
I think I am currently on track. Next week I want to start on implementation. My personal goal is to get our EC2 instance working and start learning how to use Flutter to design our mobile app. Within our team, I will work on writing up the software side of our design report and help my team finalize their parts of the design process.