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Team Status Report for 4/12/25

Risks & Management

  • Risk: Allergen info and ingredient lists are published to different MQTT topics at different times, which could cause missing context during processing.
  • Management: We cache the most recent allergen profile for each user/session so the grocery generation logic always has access to it regardless of message timing.

Design Changes & Justification:

  • Bought a magnetic clip-on attachment and magnets to attach to the device. This is to make the device stronger overall and more robust during the shopping experience

Progress:

  • Attached portable power supply to device

  • Finalizing dynamic frontend integration to reflect real product recommendations.

  • Improving fallback substitution mappings using external APIs and filtering logic.

  • Adding unique user_id tags to tie session-specific data (e.g., allergens to product input).

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Lekha’s Status Report for 4/12/25

Work Accomplished:

This week, I finished attaching the portable power bank to the device, allowing for a constant power supply during a shopping experience. I also bought the shopping cart clip on, which I will pick up next week and attach to the device. I have been working on making the rasberry pi start up the barcode scanning script automatically and read in barcodes. However, I have ran into many obstacles with this task.

Progress Status:

Due to the obstacle with making the rasberry pi start reading barcode scans automatically, I am a bit behind on this particular aspect of the project. However, making the device portable is my last major task and I have contacted my TA to try new ways to achieve it. 

Next Week’s Goal:

  • attach clip-on device
  • fix rasberry pi barcode scanning issues
  • test in-person
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Lekha’s Status Report for 3/29/25

Work Accomplished:

This week, I finished printing the 3D case that makes up the whole hardware system and attaches to the cart. In addition, I finished the connection between the USB barcode scanner, rasberry pi, and the front end mobile app updates. This finishes the basic functionality of scanning a product, retrieving its product details and displaying it on the mobile app.

Progress Status:

I am currently on track in our schedule. We adjusted our schedule based on design changes. My focus now is to make the device completely portable and able to attach to a shopping cart for our final user experience

Next Week’s Goal:

  • Make UPC scanning work with remote ssh
  • make device completely portable
  • initial testing with aldi products
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Lekha’s Status Report for 3/22/25

Work Accomplished:

This week, I was working on the connection between the rasberry pi and the mobile app. Unfortunately, I ran into some networking issues with the rasberry pi. I was unable to connect it to to my desktop due to networking issues. I set up the server on the rasberry pi, but need to have the mobile app connect to the rasberry pi server to obtain the upc info. I also put in the 3D printing request to tech spark for the overall case.

Progress Status:

I expected the last connection between mobile app and rasberry pi to be finished last week, but unfortunately ran into issues. This is the last connection, however, and should be completed in the beginning of this week.

Next Week’s Goal:

  • Retrieve 3D printed case
  • Finish last system connection
  • integration testing
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Lekha’s Status Report for 3/15/25

Work Accomplished:

This week, I worked on connecting the barcode scanner upc values to the mobile app and rasberry pi. This is used in order to automatically retrieve the product information from the UPC code. I also updated the 3D model’s dimensions to start printing

Progress Status:

The main data pipeline has been set up, so the additional features are the focus now in addition to testing.

Next Week’s Goal:

  • Test full barcode scanner -> rasberry pi -> product query -> mobile app using real grocery products
  • 3D printing techspark request
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Lekha’s Status Report for 3/8/25

Work Accomplished:

This week, I was able to successfully set up the barcode scanner connected to the rasberry pi. I created code that is able to send the UPC value to the Rasberry Pi for processing. I tested this on various items and barcodes. I was also able to create the CAD design for the 3D printed case.

Progress Status:

I am on progress as now it is able to successfully scan barcodes and send it to the rasberry pi. Now, I will focus on connecting this with Aanya’s software system to retrieve the specific product using the UPC.

Next Week’s Goal:

  • Identify the product using the UPC code
  • Begin 3D printing case
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Lekha’s Status Report for 2/22/25

Work Accomplished:

This week, I focused on setting up the rasberry pi along with its power bank that was purchased through amazon. I was able to connect it to my computer and setup the initial configurations. However, I am still waiting on the barcode scanner to continue the hardware requirements of this week.

Progress Status:

I am still waiting on the delivery of the barcode scanner, which will allow me to start integrating it with the larger hardware system and connect the scanner’s output to the rasberry pi.

Next Week’s Goal:

  • Scan items through the barcode scanner + rasberry pi pipeline
  • Connect this with the open food facts api query
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Team Status Report for 2/22/25

Risks & Management:

Feature Prioritization

    • Risk
      • We may not be able to implement our full list of features such as AI meal recommendations or allergen substitutions
    • Contingency Plan
      • We are prioritizing our different features. The main functionality is cart tracking and item scanning. Then, we will prioritize allergen substitutions.

MQTT Connection & Network Issues

    • Risk
      • Network instability may cause message loss / delays in product updates.
    • Contingency Plan
      • Implement retry mechanisms to resend messages in case of failures.
      • If the network is unstable, store scanned product data locally on the mobile app & sync when online.

Design Changes & Justification:

  • Transition from Database to Open Food Facts API and Cache
    • Originally we planned to build our own database of aldi foods and information. However, we recently found an API online that is able to access the aldi inventory and return a product through its UPC, which is the output of the barcode scanner. Therefore, instead of using memory and time to build this database, we will query for it during the shopping
    • A concern of this is latency. Therefore, we want to use a cache to retrieve frequently used item in order to still meet our quantitative requirements.

Progress:

    • Started integrating LangChain to process scanned grocery items, cross-check them with planned meals, and request substitutions when needed
    • Created a schema to store scanned products, user dietary preferences, and updated meal plans, with basic CRUD for efficient data retrieval
    • Implemented MQTT client in the mobile app

 

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Lekha’s Status Report for 02/15/25

Work Accomplished:

This week, I focused on the hardware design aspects. We took a trip to ALDI on Thursday in order to mimic the customer experience and decided to make changes to our original proposal.

  1. New Hardware Design
    1. Barcode Scanner – $40
    2. Rasberry Pi
      • main controller / sync with mobile app
    3. Battery Pack
  2. System Flow
    1. User scans item (Barcode Scanner -> Rasberry Pi)
    2. Look up barcode in local database
    3. Extract Product Info
    4. Update App Data
    5. Display on App
  3. Database
    1. online API providing ALDI UPC (public)
    2. select subset of items
    3. Exceptions: some produce did not have barcodes. We will selectively leave them out for the scope of this project as there were not many of these products.

Progress Status:

Due to changing the product design, I am behind on the original schedule that involved setting up the Jetson and camera. However, a new schedule has been made with the new design concepts in light of the change, which should keep us on track for the MVP.

Next Week’s Goal:

  • Reserve Rasberry Pi and request for Barcode Scanner
  • Build local database of Aldi inventory (web scraping)
    • collect UPC and allergen info etc
  • CAD Prototype of clip-on device (casing + power supply)