Real-time Bread/Fruit Storage Environment Monitoring

😋I Love Bread and Fruit! For convenience's sake, I will purchase 2-3 days' worth of bread or fruit in one go, and some of them will be left. I learned that storing bread in the refrigerator can actually cause it to go stale much faster than simply keeping it at a cozy room temperature. The proper way to stay bread fresh longer is to store it in plastic wrap, a reusable zip-top plastic bag, or a bread box. Avoid storing bread in damp, airy locations. Fruit storage is more sensitive to temperature, when the temperature is higher, enzymes in the fruit will be more active, with a higher respiration rate to accelerate fruit rot.

So, I have a cute bread box! A Chinese-style basket to be more specific! Usually, I will put the bread🥖 left in it, and sometimes I will put some fruits that should be stored at room temperature, like avocado🥑, bananas🍌, and persimmons.

This little basket does not, though, release me from my worry about bread/fruit going bad, especially since I live in the south where the air humidity is relatively high.

Of course, I know that I can not eat the bread/fruit if it has any splotchy, fuzzy, or discolored patches, but not all the bread/fruit smells or looks gross obviously when it goes bad, sometimes spoilage is invisible to the naked eye. Since temperature and humidity are the main cause of spoilage of food, I decided to monitor Temp&Humid within this basket and analyze the possibility of food spoilage.

Hardware Preparation

K1100 from Seeed Studio and Wio Terminal Chassis - Battery (650mAh). K1100 provides an incredibly easy way to realize my project, and the no-code start is super friendly to me.

Step One: Plug in the Wio Terminal Chassis

It is a battery designed especially for Wio Terminal, they can fit perfectly.

Step Two: Connect the Temp&Humid Sensor to the Right Grove Cable and Power it to Get Real-time Data at Once

Step Three: Put the Basket in the Suitable Place based on the Data

A study has shown that 21℃ to 35℃ (69.8°F to 95°F) is the most suitable temperature for bread storage. Humidity is another balancing act when keeping bread fresh. A bit of moisture keeps the bread fresh. Too much can make it go stale, and the crust goes soft.

🙃 It may be the simplest project on Hackster, and it can hardly be counted as a perfect IoT project since its data has not been updated to Cloud, I will continue to improve it, stay tuned!

I am back!

Step Four: Send sensor data to Ubidots via WiFi

1) Connect Wio Terminal with your computer and then a config.txt will pop up

2) Then fill in the necessary info to connect your device

① SSID=WiFi_Name

② PASSWORD=WiFi_Password

③MQTT_CLIENT_NAME=Topic

Click here to generate a unique and random MQTT client name.

④TOKEN=Default_Token

Get it from Ubidots

⑤DEVICE_LABEL=Device_Name

3) Reboot Wio Terminal

Now the Wio Terminal is connected to WiFi successfully.

I can also find my device on Ubidots and check Temperature and Humidity data.

From the dashboard, I can easily notice when the temperature is abnormally high and how long is the food kept in that environment to evaluate the possibility of food spoilage.