Our product is a small device which attaches to any commercial grade refrigeration unit and is used to track how long goods have been in there to help shoulder the user’s responsibilities. It is designed to track the items that are stored inside, and their expiration dates, to help the user remember what they have and to use their produce before it expires.
F.R.E.D
UN SUSTAINABILITY DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Empowered and Driven:
Delivering Solutions for Global Issues
13. Climate Action: we chose to pursue this goal as food waste is a significant problem, with an estimated one-third of all food produced globally being wasted, 70% of this coming from households. F.R.E.D being there to help consumers keep track of their sell by dates to avoid food wastage and expiry.
3. Good health and wellbeing: we chose to pursue this goal as it is a very common occurrence for health based incidents to be caused by rotten/expired food, so F.R.E.D is here to help consumers avoid the accidental consuming/usage of spoiled food.
12. Responsible consumption and production: F.R.E.D is here to also encourage food usage as well as avoiding overbuying as much as possible as it will be there to remind you what food you have and when its going to go off, it also helps with the accidental wastage of expensive fresh food as they tend to go off very quickly.
DESIGN STORY
Challenges
Our product is not the only solution to this issue, Samsung have announced an addition to their already existing Samsung Food application. This addition will perform a similar function that FRED will, however their solution will utilize Artificial intelligence to automatically scan in and out items from the fridge. This is a large threat to us, as Samsung can afford to develop more advanced features. However their implementation would require the user to own a Samsung smart fridge, which can be expensive.
Solution
In contrast, our product will be an inexpensive device which is separate addition the user can purchase for their fridge. This allows us to target individuals who aren’t looking for a new fridge, and people who want the benefits, but do not want an expensive fridge.
Use Case
It's purpose is to be an inexpensive, reliable attachment for any kind of fridge to allow for accessible way to keep track of all of your food items and their expiry dates, with built in alert systems and barcode reader technology. It can be used in both a personal or business setting as usage of fridges and food items ranges from household use to food enterprise
TECHNOLOGIES
List of Essential Tools and Technologies
THE PROCESS
PROTOTYPE DESIGN
It is a small plastic housing that encompasses the LCD display, the attached Raspberry Pi as well as the camera. The module will fit securely inside the prototype and then be closed with a panel on the back. This prototype is supposed to protect all of the fragile electronics while also allowing the user to stick the module to the fridge as well as stand itself up, if need be.
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Online Marketing
Creative agency
Web development
PLEDGE
Impact on the market
Our product will provide a positive impact on the market as the product will help decrease food waste thought the world and will promote sustainability within the market. It will also provide a cheaper alternative to consumers spending excessive amounts on food helping them minimize their food waste.
RESULTS
FINAL PRODUCT
“We where thinking of a way to solve food waste when we had the idea of FRED, and we immediately knew it was a great idea. After this initial concept we built upon the initial idea so that we could start development.
The first stages of development focused upon designing wireframes for the GUI, and a flow chart for the logic of the system. Following this initial planning phase, we began building FRED. The development began with making the core logic, this being entering items and viewing them on the front-end, and updating the days left in the back-end. Part of FRED is having a way to scan bar-codes for automated entry, however this caused some issues as there is little documentation for utilizing the raspberry pi camera. This caused a a significant roadblock to development, as it was a core aspect to our idea. Luckily, after a lot researching, we found a python package which is still being maintained and can be used to take photos. After finding this the rest of development went smoothly, and implementing barcode reading was simple.When creating the GUI, getting basic functionality was the priority. We used python and tkinter to create a program that can be used with ease. We used collaborative tools to simultaniously develop both the user interface and the back-end. There was some difficulties in creating proper functions that would fit on a small screen, however through testing and tinkering we overcame these issues.”
Results 1
Results 2