Daily Times

INTRODUCTION – modern lifestyle has made it easier and allows people to spend less time cooking healthy food at home. There have been many technological innovations to address the customer needs by making products that can help customers in preparing healthy food quicker in their busy schedules. The main aim of this paper is to design a a new product that will further make it easier for people to cook healthy meals, keep track of the items expired, what nutrients does the body need for the day etc. This is to provide better nutrition and improve the health. It will be basically designed in a way that will most importantly help customers perform other actions such as diet management, diet monitoring and dietary analysis, food storage management. Also, introducing smart fridge will help address the issue of food that is wasted from spoilage in the fridge. The smart fridge, through its smart screen over it will help users keep a track and monitor what food item will last for how many days and what needs to be used immediately.

Everything today incorporates technology. Technology has made human lives easier in many ways. There has been advancement in technology in almost all sectors. The primary aim of this paper is to develop a product that improves the health of users and saves their time, energy and as well decrease food wastage due to spoilage. Converting the traditional fridge to a Smart fridge requires the use of Arduino UNO as well as the fire base. It’s nine panels discussed in the paper above help to detect and identify shortage of food, food items nearing expiry date, suggestions on healthy recipes along with video demonstrations in accordance to the BMI and medical illnesses. It will consist of accurate information in its database regarding the nutrition facts for accurate suggestions to the users. The introduction of this product will prevent food wastage due to spoilage to a great extent. Research shows that in Pakistan around 76% of the food items is thrown out just because it got spoiled for being kept in the fridge for extra days. The smart fridge will beforehand alert the users about each particular food item, so that it can be used immediately and is not wasted. Not only will this product prevent wastage of food due to spoilage but also it will reduce electricity cost as its design promotes energy efficiency making it cost effective as well. Its main features to enhance and save time of users include WiFi connectivity, recipes database, barcode scanner, shopping list, built in browser, family information database, BMI calculator software, free exercise software, cooking demonstration panel. All of these features contribute to ease the living of people and promote healthy living standards and save time

According to a recent research by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), consumers waste about 1.3 billion tons of food annually and consumers in rich countries waste about 222 million tons of food products Once food products are purchased and set aside in a refrigerator, the users do not alert about their food items’ expiration date and/or freshness unless they individually examine and track them. Moreover, for food products which are not labeled with an explicit expiration date may lead to significant food spoilage and additional expenditure for the users. The system will basically be consisting of three main parts. These include sensing module, control module and transmission module. In Sensing module a load cell will be present along with the odour sensor. The second main module is the control module. It will be consisting of Arduino UNO. There will be a power supply unit as well. The third main module, transmission module includes in it an LCD module along with the Wi-Fi module. All these three modules will work in coordination to identify what is the present situation of food items and their quantity left and notify the user for how long they can be stored or when to be used. The user will receive the notification through an email and text message as well. Also, the smart screen will allow the user to enter their information regarding weight, goals and then accordingly suggest the suitable healthy options according to the items placed in fridge. It will as well include the voice recognition technology and touch sensors to identify the person opening the fridge. After identifying, it will suggest healthy diet recipes according to the data stored in family panel and food items in fridge. The idea of this project is to develop a smart refrigerator with the prime focus on better nutrition enhancing the health of people. Modern lifestyle have totally transformed the lifestyles of people. Research shows that 77 percent of people do not exercise and have an unhealthy diet in Pakistan. By developing this product it will help people prepare nutritious meals, saving both time and resources.

PERSPECTIVE OF THE PRODUCT – the main aim of the project is to create a prototype of a smart fridge. It will be focusing on nutrition facts as well as on the dietary habits of the people who will be using it. . The entire design of the system will be built by using computer simulation and then the hardware implementation as next stage. Also , this system will be having a a locally-built database. It will include all the necessary nutritional information, calories of food items (to suggest healthy diet plans). This system will be maintaining data of every individual user. This data will include the weight, height of the user, user’s, age, the medical record of user, food allergies etc. The smart fridge, to detect the food items expiry have a bar code reader. Through that, it will can scan each and every item when the item passes the door sensor. This will let the fridge record the type, exact quantity and as well as the expiry date of that item. The use will be notified as, a particular food item nears the the expiry date. All of this, information is depicted on the screen. The screen will be mounted on the door of the fridge

The unique features of the product

The unique and fundamental features of this product is that Smart fridge is intelligent to suggest appropriate and healthy recipes for different individuals in accordance to their weight, goal targets. It suggests the healthy recipes accordingly to the food items that are stored in it. Most importantly, if the user has is suffering from any illness (such as high-blood pressure, diabetes etc.), the smart fridge will provide the user with the necessary information regarding what foods to consume and what not.

MAIN FUNCTIONS & FEATURES OF THE PROTOTYPE – below is the list that provides main features implemented in the smart fridge application.
Creating healthy-recipes ideas
Video demonstration of selected recipe
Creating the list of items in fridge
Updating the store list and then generating shopping list
Notification warning about the food nearing its expiry date
Displaying calories for various foods
Getting the food items scanned and then storing that particular information into a database
Family information stored on data base
Storing record about any sort of medical illness
Identifying if the user is overweight by calculating BMI
Most importantly, the suggestions on healthy meals on the basis of users BMI and medical illnesses if any.

DISCUSSION – over the past decade, the role of the kitchen has changed dramatically. In the past, kitchen was just a place where people cooked their meals. Today, in the modern day, it is a place where families congregate, they manage their schedules, socialise with each other while eating. Initially the kitchen had a very food centric role role which has changed away to a more family command centre. Considering the lifestyle of people , a food product does not need to be created. A kitchen product needs to be created. A kitchen product, mainly has three important pillars. These include families having food, activities that are family related , and enjoying. These are the areas that I wanted to cater to for consumers and also create meaningful solutions around. The kitchen product to address the customer needs in todays world is definitely a smart fridge. The interface of the smart fridge is a touch screen on the door of the fridge. The design will be as friendly as possible so that users do not face any problem while using it. he The Smart fridge will consist of eight control panels. These will include Main Control Panel, Recipes Panel, Store List Panel, Cooking Demo Panel, Family Information Panel, BMI Calculator Panel, Nutrients Check Panel and Shopping List Panel. The most important panel of the smart fridge will be receiving the commands made by the user. Then it will be displaying the results back to user. This will be leading to many function choices. The recipes panel, will be, depicting the food recipes in two distinct ways. The first way will be to create recipes with subject to the food stored in the fridge. The second way will be to create recipes from database according to the type of dish selected by the user. Then third panel will be showing the list of all the food items that are stored in the fridge on the touch screen of fridge. The user can see this information without opening fridge door. This will also be containing information regarding the food name, food items date of expiry , and the weight of different food items. Then there will be a cooking demonstration panel. It will help the users view video the suggested recipe and help them cooking their meals quicker. Also , there will be a family family information panel storing details about family members regarding any sort of illnesses and then suggesting recipes. The BMI calculator panel, will be, allowing the users to identify whether they have a normal weight, are over weight or fall under the category of obesity. Nutrients panel, by scanning barcode will help the users find out about the nutrition facts of food items. The shopping panel develops an automated list of which items are ending and are required. The nutrients check panel, as shown in Figure 8, is to show the nutrients of each course and the nutrition facts of each item by entering its barcode. The shopping list panel, as shown in Figure 9, is to display a suggested shopping list to the user so that the user needs not to bother to consider what to buy accordingly. Smart fridges use will not only help customers save time and resources but also will cut down the costs as it will be energy efficient. The users will be notified automatically if there is any blockade in the fridge or adjust the temperature according to food item in a particular box in fridge.

CONCLUSION- everything today incorporates technology. Technology has made human lives easier in many ways. There has been advancement in technology in almost all sectors. The primary aim of this paper is to develop a product that improves the health of users and saves their time, energy and as well decrease food wastage due to spoilage. Converting the traditional fridge to a Smart fridge requires the use of Arduino UNO as well as the fire base. It’s nine panels discussed in the paper above help to detect and identify shortage of food, food items nearing expiry date, suggestions on healthy recipes along with video demonstrations in accordance to the BMI and medical illnesses. It will consist of accurate information in its database regarding the nutrition facts for accurate suggestions to the users. The introduction of this product will prevent food wastage due to spoilage to a great extent. Research shows that in Pakistan around 76 percent of the food items is thrown out just because it got spoiled for being kept in the fridge for extra days. The smart fridge will beforehand alert the users about each particular food item, so that it can be used immediately and is not wasted. Not only will this product prevent wastage of food due to spoilage but also it will reduce electricity cost as its design promotes energy efficiency making it cost effective as well. Its main features to enhance and save time of users include WiFi connectivity, recipes database , barcode scanner, shopping list, built in browser, family information database, BMI calculator software, free exercise software, cooking demonstration panel. All of these features contribute to ease the living of people and promote healthy living standards and save time.

The writer is a student at Forman Christian College. She can be reached at mishelazhar6@gmail.com