The Fridge Calculator: Refrigulator

Table of Contents
Abstract 3
Design 4
The Breakdown

Scanning 5-7 Weighing 7-9

Communication 10-15

Databases 15-19

Future 19-21

Appendix 22-33

References 34

Abstract
In today’s society all kitchen appliances are digital, “smart”, and futuristic, except the refrigerator. Coffee machines are designed to start brewing the second it’s owner hops out of bed, toasters can predict the 5-day weather forecast, and ovens can display top news stories for each day. The purpose of our project is to propel the modern day kitchen even further into the future. The Refrigulator serves to take a digital inventory of the refrigerator and determine which recipes are available to cook-up based on the user’s diet. The breakdown of our system can be separated into four portions; scanning, weighing, weireless transmission, and data analysis. The product’s UPC code is scanned, and then placed on the weighing device. The scanner transmits the UPC code information to the user interface via USB, and the scale wirelessly transmits the weight information to the user interface via single-board microcontroller. As the user interface accumulates the refrigerator inventory data, our system calculates recipes involving the products in the user’s refrigerator.

Design The components of the Refrigerlator are a charged coupled device (scanning), a strain gage (weighing), an arduino (wireless transmission), and a user interface (data accumulation and analysis). The scanner is programmed to acquire any product’s UPC information, send it directly to the user interface, and accumulate an inventory of refrigerator products. After scanning, the product is placed on the strain gage scale. The strain gage scales are reverse engineered, coupled with an arduino, and designed to read an amplified voltage change. The arduino converts the amplified voltage change into a force applied (weight in ounces), and sends this information wirelessly to a user interface. The user interface couples the information, product name and weight, and stores it in the four tablet Microsoft Excel sheet. The first tab stores the refrigeratory inventory (accumulated through the scanning and weighing process), the second tab contains a list of recipes (that we had to input ourselves), the third tab displays the list of recipes available for concoction (based on the first and second tab), and the fourth tab instructs the user how to cook-up the recipes currently available.

The Breakdown
As previously stated, our project is divided into four sections: the scanner, the strain gage scales, the communication, and the databases.

The Scanner we have chosen for our project is a Charged Couple Device (CCD). The CCD converts optical images to electrical signals. In terms of our refrigulator system, the CCD scanner converts the Universal Product Code (UPC) on each product into a digital signal. The digital signal is sent to a computer where the information pertaining to the UPC is stored in a Microsoft Excel file.

Scanning Process
The basic function of a Charged Couple Device Scanner (CCD) is to convert optical images to electrical signals. In terms of our refrigulator system, the CCD scanner converts the bar code on each product into digital signal. The process at which it does this is as follows:
1. The scanner inside the CCD shines a light at the bar code and the reflection is captured in the form of an image via the CCD for reading.
2. The image of the bar code reflection is converted into an analog waveform.
3. This analog waveform is then converted into a digital signal using a sampling method of the given analog signal, digitization.
4. The digital signal is decoded and sent to a computer where it stores the data.

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