Conceptual Design 

At the end of the day, there are three expected goals to be achieved in this project. Firstly, to raise awareness of the food waste issue, how much food waste is generated among the community, and how everyone in the community can go one step further to make changes and prevent the excess food actually to become waste. Secondly, to encourage people to communicate with others. We expected this project to be a good conversation starter because we know that food is always a good thing for people to start the conversation. Last but not least, to create the connection among the dots of the community to make relationships closer. Currently, departments in CMU are mostly isolated without too many interactions. We expect this project to bring all the departments and institutes together to the network of the whole community.  

In this stage of the project, we selected three spots on the CMU campus to implement our food stations. Each table was installed with a load cell amplifier and meter to indicate the amount of available food, and a noticeable food switch ("food here" on one side, "I took the last one" on the other side) is designed to show the availability. The map with inserted LEDs was put on the panel to display the availability in different spots on the campus.