SmartShoppers

Inspiration

Keeping track of the groceries that need to be procured and also tracking groceries that you have already procured is a difficult process because the user needs to keep all of these things in his memory throughout the week. In the future, these systems could be used to reduce the time wasted in long queues for checking out the products in a grocery store.

What it does

Can we make shopping easier, comfortable and faster? Smartshopper is a step towards achieving this goal. When the user sees the required product in the grocery store, he taps the product onto the smartwatch and then drops the product into the cart. Then the display gives real-time feedback of the items that are yet to be purchased along with the quantity requirements. .

How I built it

We built our own smartwatch prototype using an Arduino Uno, which acts as our master controller. We instrumented some objects like bottles and some other items(products in a grocery store) with NFC tags. We used an MFRC522 NFC/RFID reader to read the tags attached to these items, which we would shop from a store. We created an android app using Android studio which allows the user to feed in the list of items that the user wants to buy when he plans to go to shopping sometime later during the week. He does not have to accumulate all these tasks in his memory. The input list from the Android app is updated in real time to the firebase database system. On the day of shopping, the user's smartwatch will show a list of things that needs to be bought along with the quantity requirement. As the user taps the product of interest, the RFID reader will read these tags and their smartwatch display will automatically reduce the quantity requirement.

Challenges I ran into

1) We had to integrate hardware components like LCD display and NFC reader to Arduino. 2) Create a firebase real-time database, read an inventory of items that are to be purchased and also update in real time on the items that have been purchased using python programming language. 3)Developing an Android app using the Android studio to update firebase with the user's to-buy list.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

1) We are able to communicate the values obtained from the physical sensors to cloud platforms like Firebase database system. 2) We developed a basic hardware prototype of the system, to show its viability. 3) Built a small demo to show the overall system working.

What I learned

1) How to integrate hardware like RFID readers to microcontrollers 2) Building Android apps using the android studio

What's next for SmartShoppers

1) The range of these NFC readers are very small and so these tags can be read only when the reader is very close to them, thereby enabling only nearby interactions. If we can increase the range of these NFC readers or rather use RFID tag/Reader we would be able to achieve a higher range. So, if we have high range reader integrated into smartwatches, they can be used to easily track various product inside a shop, so that we don't have to keep roaming around the shop to find our required product. 2) Currently, in the market, smartwatches have NFC tags on them, but they don't actually have NFC reader in it. So can we make the hardware small enough, that we can add NFC/ RFID reader into smartwatches? This project is our step towards achieving the goal. 3) Develop a better android app on the phone which will allow multiple users(from a same family/community) to add to the same cart so that either of the family members would be able to check out the necessary items. 4) Automate the payment process, so that the user can be billed based on the items that they have procured as they leave the shop.