Automated Food Dispenser with Minimal Interaction with IoT Technology
G Kavin Kumar, K. Raj Thilak, E S Aswin, R Ranjith, J. S. Ray Parthasarathy · 2024
The main objective of the automated food dispenser is to reduce the total cost of the construction of the vending by decreasing the hardware modules used in the food dispenser. In the traditional food dispenser, a display module is used to interact with the machine to buy items from the food dispenser and display the items that are in it. In addition to that the display needs a universal display driver to communicate the details with microcontroller which is high in cost. Proposed solution is to eliminate or reduce contact with the food dispenser and automate the whole process of buying the items from the food dispenser by introducing the way of communicating with food dispenser using with our mobile phones rather than using the inbuilt display in the traditional Food dispensers. Thereby the contact of human interaction with the food dispenser can be eradicated, which is crucial and was a high threat during the corona period because the main spread of the virus is due to the Human interactions. So, the flow the automated food dispenser. Despenser is using a lOT-controlled NODE-MCU with the MQTT protocol to enable real time communication to link up the end devices and the food dispenser. The MQTT methodology is used to maintain a live communication between all the end users connected to food dispenser. The way how it works is when a user comes to buy items from the food dispenser, there will be an arcade displayed on the food dispenser the users can scan the arcade shown in the food dispenser and they will be redirected to a web portal. The web portal will consist of an e-commerce store that shows the products that are in the food dispenser. Users can select which item they want to buy from the food dispenser and add the items in the cart like a normal e-commerce store. After adding all the items in the cart the checkout the products they are included in the cart. Then they will be asked to pay the amount for the products they ordered, the users can pay the amount via either UPI or card details. After completing the payment, the website verifies the payment and notifies the food dispenser that the amount is paid and the products will be dispensed.