IoT Based Novel Smart Refrigerator to Curb Food
Wastage
Gaurav Anand
Service R&D – Web Service
Samsung India Electronics Private Limited
Noida, India
gaurav.anand@samsung.com
Abstract—The objective of this paper is to propose a next
generation Smart Refrigerator enriched with sensors, camera
and image recognition mechanism. Refrigerators are commonly
used for storing and preserving food for an extended period of
time. Modern lifestyle has made people more work centric which
spares less time for them to focus on their daily food
consumption. Eventually they become unaware of quantity and
quality of food stored inside their refrigerators. As a result, the
stored food in refrigerators is left uneaten and wasted more
often. Food wastage leads to rise in greenhouse gases emission
and food insecurity especially in developing countries. This paper
presents an idea of a smart refrigerator that is able to detect the
quality and measure the quantity of food products stored inside
it. It is designed to notify user of food shortage, food spoilage and
current status of food items using an android application on a
mobile device. The user is able to detect spoilage of food item in
preliminary stage. Thus, it will provide user a manageable as well
as convenient way of food storage and preservation.
Keywords—smart refrigerator; image recognition; food
wastage; internet of things
I. INTRODUCTION
A study by Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations reveals that approximately 33% of food
generated for human consumption is lost or wasted globally
which sums up to 1.3 billion tons per year [1]. Loss of food
leads to wastage of resources such as water, energy, land and
other bio-resources used in its production. We aim to curb this
problem with the use of IOT (Internet of Things). IOT is a
network of devices connected among themselves and to the
internet. It is a huge network of connected things which collect
and share data about the way they are used and about the
environment around them. The devices and objects are
accompanied with built in sensors that are connected to an IOT
platform. The IOT platform aids in integrating data from
different devices and applying analytics to share the most
useful information using applications designed to address
specific needs. We are going through a period where the
number and type of devices connected to internet is increasing
rapidly. As per the Ericson Mobility Report Nov 2017, around
20 billion IOT-devices are expected to be connected globally
by 2023 [2]. With the help of this paper, we introduce an IOT
environment into a refrigerator which includes Arduino AT
Mega 2560 as an IOT platform, sensors such as distance
sensor, load sensor, gas sensor and camera. The system is
978-1-5386-6894-8/18/$31.00 2018
c IEEE
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Lucky Prakash
Service R&D – Web Service
Samsung India Electronics Private Limited
Noida, India
lucky.p@samsung.com
designed with the objective of minimizing wastage of stored
food that is left uneaten due to user's taste preference or left
forgotten due to carelessness inside the refrigerator. The
sensors and camera collects the respective data of food
products and communicate to Google Firebase via Arduino
microcontroller. The system also supports an Android
application that enables user to easily track availability and
spoilage of food products stored inside refrigerator on a mobile
phone. The rest of the paper is structured as follows. In section
II, we will cover the literature survey in smart refrigeration
technology and problems associated with present smart
refrigerators. In section III, we will describe the concept behind
our proposal. In section IV, we will cover the system
architecture. In section V, we will discuss the implementation
part. In section VI, we will cover the results of proposed
system. Section VII concludes our work and discusses future
work.
II. LITERATURE SURVEY
In 2003, LG launched a digital fridge with multimedia
capability [3]. It supported MP3 player for downloading and
playing songs online using Internet. Other services included
email and video mail using a built in camera and a microphone.
At that time, it was regarded as a unique and ultimate thing in
kitchen technology.
With the year 2006, Electrolux reintroduced screen fridge
with more features and highest price in the segment [3]. The
screen fridge was connected to broadband and TV via wireless
connection. In addition to internet, email, phone, radio and
MP3 player, Electrolux added video messaging system and
advanced calendar so the kitchen genuinely becomes the core
hub in one’s house. One could check weather and traffic
conditions before leaving home.
Samsung in 2013 declared production of T9000, a
refrigerator that boasted a 10 inch LCD touchscreen option [4].
One of the main features of the appliance was the LCD display
that connects to a home network via wifi. The main drawback
was that users could not install their own apps, but a variety of
apps come preloaded including Epicurious, weather, AP news.
It also featured Google calendar integration and Evernote,
which aids users to share recipes, photos and videos.
In CES 2016, Samsung launched a new type of refrigerator
featuring a 21.5 inch touchscreen and a built-in camera [5]. In
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this model, users didn’t need to enter products list manually.
Rather, built-in camera allowed users to check the actual image
inside the fridge with a smartphone. This product was termed
as Family Hub by Samsung possibly to give their product a
core role in the household.
Hsin-Han & Yung-Ting, 2017 used camera module to
capture food images and upload the detected products data to
the cloud database [6]. However, there is no mention of food
detection technique supporting the task. Moreover, the lack of
food spoilage detection system makes the proposal incomplete.
Aurel-Dorian & Valentin, 2016 took into consideration that
each and every product bought will have a tracking RFID tag
[7]. Therefore, the proposal doesn’t seem to be compatible with
present market scenario where some products are not yet
associated with a unique RFID tag.
In spite of all the advancements, few problems are still
present to deal with:
A. Cost Factor
The prices of existing smart refrigerators are quite high. For
instance, a cheapest Samsung Family Hub fridge is available at
a price of USD $5599.99, which is obviously not viable for an
average family.
B. Fixed Hardware Components
Smart refrigerators used to come with fixed hardware
system and the user was not able to customize the features
provided based on his preferences. For instance, user had to
pay for MP3 player included in refrigerator even if user finds it
of no use.
C. Organizing Data
Not each and every product is associated with barcode or
RFID tag, therefore it wastes a significant amount of user’s
time to enter product details manually into the system.
D. Dependency on Expiry Dates
Existing smart refrigerators didn’t detect initial stage of
food spoilage and were solely dependent on expiry dates
fetched from RFID tags or barcodes.
III. CONCEPT
Our system proposes numerous benefits to the user in the
sense of avoiding wastage and maintaining the stock of
necessary food items in the refrigerator at all times.
A. Recognizing addition of food
The addition of food is recognized with the use of RFID
scanner which is mounted on the outer body of the refrigerator.
It is used to scan the details pertaining to the products namely
manufacturer, food category, expiry date etc. Each and every
food item in our household cannot contain a RFID tag because
lots of products are bought unpacked from the market.
Therefore, our system includes the second method of
recognizing the addition of food products. It involves use of
camera module. Food items can be effectively recognized from
images using image recognition mechanism [8-10].
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B. Recognizing removal of food
Our system identifies removal of products with the use of
load sensors in various divisions and camera module present
inside the refrigerator. Load sensors are used to measure
quantity of food present in the fridge. Furthermore, with each
opening and closing of door camera captures an image to keep
track of list items present inside the fridge.
C. Assessing freshness of food
As described earlier, RFID tag can be used to fetch
product’s expiry date. Thus, user will be able to view expiry
date on mobile phone corresponding to each food product
present inside the refrigerator. Furthermore, in order to assess
the freshness of products without RFID tag, our system
features use of C2H4 ethylene gas sensor. It measures the
concentration of ethylene gas in fridge at any given time.
Ethylene gas is responsible for speeding the ripening of fruits
and vegetables [11]. However, release of ethylene in shipping
containers or storage causes unwanted ripening of food leading
to spoilage and economic losses. While some fruits and
vegetables are high ethylene producers, others are more
sensitive to it [12].
D. Notifying user of scarce products
It is not possible to maintain stock of each and every food
item in the refrigerator. However, user can predefine daily need
products with the required threshold quantities. As soon as the
product quantity goes below threshold, user gets a notification
on phone regarding shortage of food item.
E. Monitoring products list
The system allows user to keep track of products inside
refrigerator through mobile application. It uses Google
Firebase cloud database to store products details collected by
camera and sensors mounted on refrigerator. Google provides
Firebase cloud service for synchronization of data on multiple
devices.
IV. ARCHITECTURE
The block diagram in Fig. 1 illustrates the different
components used in our system. The components such as load
Fig. 1. Hardware architecture
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 sensor, distance sensor, gas sensor along with camera module
are incorporated into a refrigerator to build what we call as a
Smart Refrigerator. The above components are connected to
Arduino AT Mega 2560, an IOT platform for collecting and
storing their respective outputs to Google Firebase cloud
service. The products list is finally fetched from Firebase cloud
system and displayed on user’s mobile.
A. Arduino ATMega 2560
Arduino Mega 2560 is a microcontroller based on the AT
Mega 2560. It supports large number of digital input/output
pins. It contains 16 analog inputs, a USB connection, a power
jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button [13]. Fig. 2 shows a
top view of Arduino AT Mega 2560 microcontroller. The
Mega 2560 board can be programmed with the Arduino IDE. It
comes preprogrammed with a bootloader that allows to upload
a new code to it without the use of an external hardware
programmer. It can be powered via the USB connection or with
an external power supply. The board can operate on an external
supply of 6 to 20 volts. It has 256 KB of flash memory for
storing code.
JPEG images which make them small and easy to store. Fig. 3
illustrates connection of camera and wifi module with Arduino
microcontroller.
D. Ethylene gas sensor
In our system, we use ME3-C2H4 electrochemical gas
sensor to measure concentration of ethylene gas inside the
refrigerator. In order to avoid the premature spoiling of food
item, we notify user for the appropriate action on the mobile
phone. In ME3-C2H4 gas sensor, working electrode in
electrolytic cell undergoes electrochemical oxidation process.
The concentration of gas is measured with the amount of
current produced in the electrochemical radiation [16]. Fig. 4
defines connection of ethylene gas sensor to Arduino AT Mega
2560 microcontroller.

Fig. 4. Connection of ME3-C2H4 gas sensor with Arduino Mega board

E. Ultrasonic Distance Sensor

HC-SR04T is used to sense non-contact distance from an
object with range 20cm-400cm with accuracy up to 3mm [17].
It turns on its TRIG pin to 5V for at least 10 microseconds and
then automatically send 8 40KHz tones and detect when the
signal return after reflecting back from the object. The time
Fig. 2. Arduino AT Mega 2560 Microcontroller
duration between transmitting and receiving back the signal is
used to calculate the distance. Fig. 5 describes connection of
B. WiFi Adafruit CC3000 distance sensor with microcontroller board.
In order to add internet connectivity to the microcontroller,
we are using Adafruit CC3000 wifi module [14]. It uses SPI for
communication instead of UART. This helps to push data as
fast or slow as one want. It comes with a proper interrupt
system with IRQ pin so as to provide asynchronous
connections. Moreover, it is supported by 802.11 b/g and
open/WEP/WPA/WPA2 types of security to keep intruders
away from the system.

C. Camera Module
For image capturing, we used TTL serial camera from
Adafruit [15]. It is pretty easy to use this module and only
requires two digital pins. It takes snapshots and transmits them
over the TTL serial link. It is featured with manually adjustable
focus, auto-brightness, auto-white-balance and auto-contrast
options. It can be configured to snap pictures at 640x480,
320x240 or 160x120. The captured images are pre-compressed
Fig. 5. Ultrasonic distance sensor connection with microcontroller
F. Load cell
A load cell is a type of physical sensor that creates an
electronic signal whenever a force or load acts over it. This
electronic signal can be one out of voltage change, frequency
change or current change depending on the circuitry being used
in the system [18]. As shown in Fig. 6, we are interfacing a 40
Kg load cell to the Arduino microcontroller using the HX711
load cell amplifier for measuring weights of food items. The
advantage of using this over others is that there is no

Fig. 3. Camera module and wifi module connection with Arduino

microcontroller.

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Fig. 6. Load cell and HX711 connection with Arduino board
programming needed for the internal registers. HX711
amplifier is used to amplify the electronic signals from the load
cells and communicating them to Arduino microcontroller. The
load cell is plugged into HX711 microchip and this microchip
informs the Arduino microcontroller the readings of load cells.
V. IMPLEMENTATION
The first step requires the user to attach an Arduino AT
Mega 2560 board along with the camera and described sensors
onto the refrigerator. While adding a new product, user scans
RFID tag if available against RFID scanner. The distance
sensor triggers the camera as soon as the door is opened or
closed by the user. With this, an inside image of fridge is
captured to detect the current list of products using image
recognition mechanism as illustrated in Fig. 7. The details
associated with RFID and the list of detected products is
synchronized and communicated to Google Firebase using wifi
connection.
In addition, the data from load sensors is also shared with
Google Firebase’s database on subsequent opening and closing
of door. Load sensors will keep track of weight of products
remaining in the fridge. As soon as the product weight goes
below the user specified threshold, user gets a notification on
mobile phone running an android application. The gas sensor
measures the concentration of ethylene gas released by
ripening food. Gas sensor program will keep on running in the
background in order to detect and prevent food spoilage as
soon as possible. The current gas concentration can be checked
on mobile device at any given time.
Fig. 7. Detection of food items using image recognition techniques [19]
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VI. RESULTS
The android application provides user a list of contents
stored in the refrigerator. Food items are recognized using
RFID tag and camera module with image recognition
mechanism. Expiry dates for each product is also provided by
RFID tag associated with the food product. Food quantity is
displayed on the basis of result obtained from load cells and
camera module. Fig. 8 displays the list of contents on user’s
mobile with the current ethylene gas concentration displayed at
the bottom. An alert is triggered whenever ethylene gas
concentration goes beyond a set threshold. User can select low
quantity food items and buy from online grocery store with a
button click.
Fig. 8. List of contents displayed on android phone
VII. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
In this paper, we proposed a hybrid smart refrigerator using
various sensors and image recognition mechanism to avoid
food wastage in household as well as commercial sector. The
android application provides user with real time updates. The
cloud based architecture provides easy synchronization and
database access from multiple devices. In addition, our system
can be used as a stand-alone kit that can be integrated with any
fridge to make it smart. In the future, we look forward to
integrating more sensors to enhance our system’s capabilities.
Smart refrigerator can be made to communicate with other
smart appliances to achieve a more complex task. Furthermore,
this prototype can be applied to modules which require
managing and real time tracking such as drawers, cupboards
etc.
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