Tengyue Pan ¹ and Jonathan Sahagun ² , ¹ USA, ² California State University, USA

Shared laundry facilities in university dormitories present persistent operational inefficiencies, as students lack real-time visibility into machine availability and status. This paper presents LaundrySense, a cross-platform mobile application built with the Flutter framework and Firebase backend services that enables real-time monitoring and management of IoT-enabled laundry devices in student housing environments. The system implements role-based access control separating administrator and student functionalities, leverages Firebase Realtime Database for sub-second sensor data synchronization, and organizes devices through a location-based hierarchy of buildings and rooms. Three major components are analyzed: authentication with role-based routing, real-time IoT sensor streaming via StreamBuilder widgets, and a multi-step device registration workflow with server-side validation. Experimental evaluation demonstrates mean synchronization latencies of 142 milliseconds on campus Wi-Fi, confirming suitability for real-time monitoring. Compared to camera-based, machine-learning-driven, and general-purpose smart campus approaches, LaundrySense provides a focused, low-cost, and privacy-preserving solution for communal laundry management.

Internet of Things (IoT), Mobile Application Development, Flutter Cross-Platform Framework, Firebase Backend-as-a-Service, Real-Time Sensor Monitoring