1. Food Inventory Tracker
ECE Computer Engineering Design Project
Food Inventory Tracker
Andrew Bradshaw, Andrew Hoskins, Kyle O’Shaughnessy, Udey Rishi
2017
Overview
The Food Inventory Tracker (FIT) is a device for the kitchen that keeps track of food inventory. Food items are added using speech recognition or a barcode scanner. It is used alongside an Android app that delivers suggested recipes based on the inventory. The app can also be used to view and modify existing inventory.
Altera DE2 board
Barcode Scanner: The barcode scanner communicates over a PS/2 interface and emulates a keyboard. A driver was written to decode the virtual key presses and construct a barcode out of the individual key sequences.
Barcode Translation
Push-to-Talk Microphone: Combines a simple toggle switch alongside the Wolfson WM8731 audio codec. The driver for this component periodically copies samples from the audio codec’s channel fifos until a recording buffer has been filled or the push-to-talk switch has been toggled. Each audio sample is 16 bits wide and is sampled at 32 KHz.
Ethernet Interface: Uses the Nichestack TCP/IP stack to send data using the onboard Davicom DM9000A Ethernet controller. There is a custom HTTP client implementation used to talk to the server.
For colour ideas, University Visual Identity Guidelines can be found here:
Components
Altera DE2 board
Adafruit PS/2 barcode scanner
3.5mm microphone
Android app
Node.js server
MongoDB database
Android app
The app is used to view and modify inventory, and receive recipe suggestions. Recipe suggestions will be optimizing current inventory consumption, but can be further filtered by other parameters such as dietary restriction and cuisine preferences.
Node.js Server
The server is hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It connects to a MongoDB database, also hosted by AWS. When food inventory is added, it is stored in this database. The server also provides a common interface to three external APIs, listed below:
Google Cloud Speech API: translate voice into food item names.
Spoonacular Recipe API: lookup recipes using specific food items.
Outpan Barcode API: translate food item barcode into product name.
Features
Inventory tracking: add/delete items using voice recognition or barcode scanner connected to Altera DE2 board.
Inventory management: view and modify food inventory on Android app.
Recipes suggestions: find creative ways to efficiently use food inventory.
Motivation
Reduce food waste: currently ¼ of all produced food is wasted, with ¼ of this being wasted by households.
Recipe discovery: more diversity in home cooked meals.
Inventory
Recipe filters
Hardware block diagram
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering