A Low Power IoT-Connected Smart Canister System Creating Automatic Shopping List

• Main Author: Tareq Khan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-07-01
• Series: Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks
• Subjects: Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE); Wi-Fi; proximity sensor; android things; cloud messaging; shopping list
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2224-2708/8/3/38

One of the most common forgotten things of adults is that they go to the shops and completely forget what they went for. The solution to this problem is to carry a shopping list. In this project, a novel Internet of Things (IoT)-connected smart canister system is developed, which automatically senses the item quantity in the canisters using proximity sensor, sends the data to a hub using Bluetooth Low Energy, and then the hub sends a cloud message to the consumer’s smartphone app using the Internet. The hub and the smartphone app display the item quantities and automatically add the items that are about to finish to a digital shopping list. The automatic generation of the shopping list removes the burden of manually checking each item before going to the shops and gives peace of mind to the consumers. A prototype of the proposed system with three canister devices, one hub, and the smartphone app is developed and tested successfully. The canister device consumes ultra-low power and has a battery life of more than a year.