Claims:WE CLAIM:
1) A food quality monitoring and safety management system based on internet of things (IOT) comprising of;
a. sensors for monitoring parameters such as temperature, humidity, alcohol content, and exposure to light;
b. a microcontroller interfaced with various sensors to monitor various parameters;
c. displaying the sensor data on LCD interfaced with microcontroller;
d. logging and monitoring of sensor data with the help of the database of the website.
2) The food quality monitoring and safety management system based on internet of things (IOT) as claimed in claim 1, wherein the said system is with WiFi and LCD and are interfaced to the microcontroller.
3) The food quality monitoring and safety management system based on internet of things (IOT) as claimed in claim 1, wherein the said Humidity and temperature sensors both sense the temperature and humidity of area and give the output to the IC connected to back side of the sensor.
4) The food quality monitoring and safety management system based on internet of things (IOT) as claimed in claim 1, wherein the said Alcohol sensor is used to detect the presence of ethanol.
5) The food quality monitoring and safety management system based on internet of things (IOT) as claimed in claim 1, wherein the said LDR sensor is used to sense the intensity of light and is connected to the microcontroller.
, Description:FIELD OF THE INVENTION:
The present invention relates to a food safety system. The present invention more particularly relates to a food quality monitoring and safety management system based on internet of things (IOT).
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION:
Food is the main energy source for the living being; as such food quality and safety have been in the highest demand throughout the human history. Internet of things (IoT) is a technology vision to connect anything at anytime and anywhere. Utilizing IoT in the food supply chain (FSC) enhances the quality of life by tracing and tracking the food condition and live sharing the obtained data with the consumers or the FSC supervisors. Currently, full application of IoT in the FSC is still in the developing stage and there is a big gap for improvements. Food safety and hygiene is a major concern in order to prevent food wastage. The quality of food needs to be monitored and it must be prevented from routing and decaying atmospheric factors like temperature, humidity and darkness Therefore, it is useful to deploy quality monitoring devices at food stores .These quality monitoring devices keep a watch on the environmental factors that cause or pace up decay of the food. Later, the environmental factors can be controlled like by refrigeration, vaccum storage etc,
A food contamination can occur in the production process, but also a large part caused by the inefficient food handling because of inappropriate ambient conditions when the food is being transported and stored. There are many factors leading to food poisoning, typically changes in temperature and humidity are important factors. So the monitoring system capable of measuring temperature and humidity variability during transport and storage is of prime importance. Today almost everybody is getting affected by the food they consume, it's not only about the junk food, but all the packed foods, vegetables, products consumed and used in daily life, as all of them do not offer quality since their temperature, moisture, oxygen content vary from time to time. Majority of consumers only pay attention to the information provided on the packaging, i.e., the amount of ingredients used and their nutritional value, but they forget that they are blindly risking their health by ignoring the environmental conditions to which these packets are subjected. Every product making firm just want to attract more and more consumers towards them. Their aim is to to sell the product anyhow, like by adding more flavors, coloring chemicals and preservatives to increase the taste and appearance, but they forget that these money making tactics are actually affecting the consumer’s health. The performance and analysis of routine measurements, aimed at detecting changes in the nutritional or health status of the food doesn't guarantee.
So there is a need for a food quality monitoring and safety management system based on internet of things (IOT). The present invention helps to ensure food safety, it should be monitored at every stage of supply chain. It serves the purpose of preventive consumer health protection by maintaining the required standard ambient conditions needed to preserve the quality of food. For the purposes of planning, policy analysis, program evaluation and trend forecasting, information collected through monitoring and surveillance must be analyzed and transmitted to decision makers in an appropriate format and in a timely fashion if it is to be of real value. Dissemination of information must be an interactive process. The job of a control and monitoring systems is to keep an eye on particular thing or activity and to make sure that it stays in the desired manner. Monitoring can be achieved using various electronic sensors. Further these recorded values can be used for the purpose of controlling. The data obtained from sensors can be compared to the desired values. If the sensor readings are found to be unequal to the desired values then the control circuit come into action to manipulate the assigned activity to keep it in desired manner. The present invention can preserve raw foods monitors and controls food materials and prevent it from damages occurring due to atmospheric or climatic changes. Also improper storing of food materials can lead to wastage of food. The present invention focuses on safe storage of foods by monitoring and controlling various parameters affecting food materials. This system makes use of storage units implanted with various electronic sensors which can read those parameters affecting food materials.
OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION:
The main object of the present invention is to provide a food quality monitoring and safety management system based on internet of things (IOT).
Another object of the present invention is to help to ensure food safety and monitoring of food at every stage of supply chain.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide preventive consumer health protection by maintaining the required standard ambient conditions needed to preserve the quality of food.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION:
Accordingly, a food quality monitoring and safety management system based on internet of things (IOT) is disclosed. Food quality monitoring and safety management system based on internet of things (IOT) comprising of; sensors for monitoring parameters such as temperature, humidity, alcohol content, and exposure to light; a microcontroller interfaced with various sensors to monitor various parameters; displaying the sensor data on LCD interfaced with microcontroller; and logging and monitoring of sensor data with the help of the database of the website.
DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS:
Fig 1 is the food quality monitoring and safety management system based on internet of things (IOT).
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION WITH RESPECT TO DRAWINGS:
The present invention is a food quality monitoring and safety management system based on internet of things (IOT). The present invention helps to ensure food safety, it should be monitored at every stage of supply chain. It serves the purpose of preventive consumer health protection by maintaining the required standard ambient conditions needed to preserve the quality of food. For the purposes of planning, policy analysis, program evaluation and trend forecasting, information collected through monitoring and surveillance must be analyzed and transmitted to decision makers in an appropriate format and in a timely fashion if it is to be of real value. Dissemination of information must be an interactive process. The job of a control and monitoring systems is to keep an eye on particular thing or activity and to make sure that it stays in the desired manner. Monitoring can be achieved using various electronic sensors. Further these recorded values can be used for the purpose of controlling. The data obtained from sensors can be compared to the desired values. If the sensor readings are found to be unequal to the desired values then the control circuit come into action to manipulate the assigned activity to keep it in desired manner. The present invention can preserve raw foods monitors and controls food materials and prevent it from damages occurring due to atmospheric or climatic changes. Also improper storing of food materials can lead to wastage of food. The present invention focuses on safe storage of foods by monitoring and controlling various parameters affecting food materials. This system makes use of storage units implanted with various electronic sensors which can read those parameters affecting food materials.
In one embodiment, the present invention tackles the problem of undesirable condition of food storage is the important part of this idea. A control mechanism can be decided to manipulate each of the parameters whenever required.
In one embodiment, an IoT framework for facilitating food monitoring for protection of the food, so that it would not get contaminated due to surrounding conditions during storage and transportation. In present scenario, the work done is in terms of the sensed values that have been recorded and a detailed analysis has been performed
Food quality and safety gains attentions of both government agencies and consumers due to the major loss to the state revenue, and also the consumers health risks that caused by breaching the food standards. Food packaging plays an important role to preserve the quality and safety along the line of the supply chain. Traditional packaging is only meant to protect the food from the environmental changes such as, temperature, humidity, light, gaseous emissions or microbial attacks.
In another embodiment, a food quality monitoring system comprising of; sensors for monitoring parameters such as temperature, humidity, alcohol content, and exposure to light. The system is based on a microcontroller interfaced with various sensors to monitor various parameters. The sensor data is displayed on LCD interfaced with microcontroller. The database of the website is used for logging and monitoring of sensor data. The system of the present invention affecting food storage can be monitored anywhere, anytime and from any device.
In another embodiment, sensors, WiFi and LCD are interfaced to the microcontroller. It can be connected to USB port. It can be connected to most of the IoT platforms. Wifi modem and LCD are interfaced to microcontroller.
Humidity and temperature sensors both sense the temperature and humidity of area and give the output to the IC (which is placed on back side of sensor). The Data Out pin of the sensor is connected to microcontroller.
Alcohol sensor is used to detect the presence of ethanol, where the sensitive material used for this sensor is SnO2, whose conductivity is lower in clean air. It’s conductivity increases as the concentration of ethanol gases increases. It has high sensitivity to alcohol and has a good resistance to disturbances due to smoke, vapor and gasoline. This module provides both digital and analog outputs. It has a high sensitivity and fast response time. Sensor provides an analog resistive output based on alcohol concentration. The presence of ethanol vapors in food is a sign of decay. So, it can be detected if food has started decaying. The digital output pin is not used therefore is kept not connected. The output of the sensor is drawn from the analog output pin which is connected to the pin of the microcontroller.

LDR Sensor – The LDR is used to sense the intensity of light. The sensor is connected to the microcontroller. The LDR provides an analog voltage which is converted to digital reading by the in-built ADC.
LCD display: LCD display is connected to the microcontroller by connecting its data pins to pins of the microcontroller.

This microcontroller based IoT device should be installed in a food store. Once it is properly installed and powered on, it connects with the internet via Wi-Fi modem and start reading data from the interfaced sensors –temperature and humidity sensor, and the LDR sensor.
Temperature and Humidity Sensor is a digital sensor with inbuilt capacitive humidity sensor and Thermistor. It relays a real-time temperature and humidity reading every 2 seconds. The sensor operates on 3.5 to 5.5 V supply and can read temperature between 0° C and 50° C and relative humidity between 20% and 95%.

The sensor cannot be directly interfaced to a digital pin of the board as it operates on 1-wire protocol which must be implemented only on the firmware. First the data pin is configured to input and a start signal is sent to it. After sending the start signal, the pin is configured to digital output and 40-bit data comprising of the temperature and humidity reading is latched out. Of the 5-byte data, the first two bytes are integer and decimal part of reading for relative humidity respectively, third and fourth bytes are integer and decimal part of reading for temperature and last one is checksum byte.

The LDR sensor is connected in a potential divider circuit and inputs a voltage at the analog input pin of the controller.
The sensor detects the emission of ethanol type of gases. If the food/fruits get spoiled, they emit the ethanol type of gases. The sensor detects the concentration of such gases and output an analog voltage proportional to the concentration of the gas. The analog output is passed to the analog pin of the microcontroller which has inbuilt ADC that coverts the analog to digital value.

The microcontroller collects data from all the sensors and convert the values to the strings. The sensor data wrapped as proper strings are passed to the character LCD for display. The Wi-Fi module connected to the microcontroller uploads the data to database of the website Server. For displaying and monitoring data uploaded to the that server, either a digital dashboard or data broker is needed. A digital dashboard called Freeboard.io is used to monitor the sensor data visually online.
The microcontroller manages to collect data from the sensors and LDR sensor, convert sensor values to string, display them on character LCD and pass data to the database of the website server. The variables representing pin connections to read the sensor data are initialized.
In another embodiment, food quality monitoring and safety management system based on internet of things (IOT) comprising of; sensors for monitoring parameters such as temperature, humidity, alcohol content, and exposure to light; a microcontroller interfaced with various sensors to monitor various parameters; displaying the sensor data on LCD interfaced with microcontroller; and logging and monitoring of sensor data with the help of the database of the website.