Maintaining fridge hygiene for quality food

Food Pi monitors the hygiene level of food items inside a refrigerator and sends notifications to a user's smartphone

Keeping in view food safety concerns, four engineering graduates have developed a device that can monitor the hygiene level of food items kept inside a refrigerator.

Tanmay Baranwal, Ajitesh Dixit, Nitika Rajput and Chandrasena Sai Srikanth who graduated with a BTech degree in Computer Science Engineering from Lovely Professional University (LPU) in 2016, took seven months to develop the device namely 'Food Pi'. After conceptualising the idea in October 2015, the team along with the help of their professor Harshpreet Singh, completed the product in May 2016.

Talking to Education Times, Nitika says, "Keeping stale food items for days inside a refrigerator disrupt the inside environment. However, due to our fast-paced life, we hardly get time to constantly keep a tab on the food items. Hence, we decided to create a device that will keep a check."

Food Pi comes with an app of the same name, which is available on both Android and iOS platforms. Users need to install the device inside the refrigerator and install the app on their smartphones as well. When a food product starts decaying, Food Pi will send notifications to the user's smartphone in the form of a hygiene score as well as graphs. "On a scale of 0-100, the user can learn about the hygiene level of the food items. The graphs will illustrate the current state of food items and if they are close to getting rotten," says Tanmay, who works as a Computer Engineer in Hyderabad.

The device consists of four sensors namely temperature and humidity monitor, volatile organic compound (VOC) sensor, Carbon Monoxide (CO) sensor and Ammonia sensor.

Tanmay says that getting hold of all the sensors and carefully implementing them in the device was one of the major challenges for the team. "VOC sensor is not easily available in India unlike the other three sensors; hence finding it was a big challenge for us."

A Delhi-based agricultural entrepreneur, Nitika says that implementing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in the device was another challenge. "A refrigerator contains several food items, which means each item releases variable readings. Calibrating these readings and using ML to make the device process all the information, and send notifications to a smartphone was a tough task."

"We began working on Food Pi from third year of college when we were yet to learn AI and ML. Therefore, we had to read and do a lot of research to use our understanding for the development of the device," adds Tanmay.

The product is yet to hit the market. The team had applied for patent in 2016 and are awaiting the same. Currently, they are working to build a custom-built processor so that the cost of the device lessens. "We built the prototype with a pre-developed processor that cost us around Rs 23,000, but a custom-built processor costs Rs 700-800. Hence, with that the cost of the device will go down to Rs 5000-7000, which in turn will make the device affordable to most Indians," says Tanmay, adding that the team aims industrial bases such as cold storages and urban households as their target audience.

Harshpreet Singh says that currently he is working with the team to add more features to the device. "Presently, Food Pi can monitor the hygiene level of food products for several categories such as milk products, green vegetables. We are working to add a feature through which users can be notified about the hygiene level of a particular food item such as cheese, milk, butter, etc. and even packed and unpacked items," he says, adding that he hopes to launch Food Pi within another two to three years.