I am a person who always shops lots of food and cooks little. Most of the food ends up rotting in the fridge before being eaten. So I wonder if I could make a bluetooth device that can alert me to eat them within their storing period. I was inspired by the kitchen timer and Ziploc seal top bags with date and name blank spaces.

What if I give food a sticker as the identifier so that the timer can keep track of the remaining storing time of the food and alert me before it rots?

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Possible user storyboard

Diagram

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After talking with Tom, I decided to use the camera to scan the QR stickers on the smart phone instead of using standalone camera on the hardware. Two reasons that Tom provided convinced me: 1) it was cheaper to make the hardware peripheral; 2) it's more convenient for users to scan and input info as a smooth experience. So smartphone worked as a central device to input data and monitored the food status, while the peripheral hardware served as a reminder attached on the fridge.

This week I tried to make the experience of data input done. Here's what I designed and coded the food tracking and managing interfaces.

Interaction Design

I achieved most part of the front-end design. Here's the live test on my safari browser. Users can add new food info to the database and display all the food info in the main screen. The scanning process will be added later.

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BOM

1. OLED Screen: Adafruit SSD 1306
2. QR/Barcode scanner module: scanhome barcode scanner module (usb/ttl)
3. Rotary encoder
4. Arduino nano 33 IoT
5. 2 Push buttons