SMART PANTRY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM USING IOT FOR EFFICIENT INVENTORY MONITORING AND FOOD WASTE

Abstract

Inefficient pantry management and food waste are persistent issues in modern households, particularly for time-constrained individuals who routinely neglect to restock essential food supplies. Ultimately, unnecessary purchases and expired goods brought on by a lack of real-time monitoring skills lead to avoidable waste. The current research effort is the design of an IoT internet things based smart pantry management system to automate inventory monitoring. The system is comprised of a ESP32-CAM module, a NodeMCU ESP32 microcontroller and force-sensitive resistors (FSRs). Taken together, these parts could potentially offer a live video feed of what’s in the pantry, and alert when supplies are getting low. Users can get visual updates and alerts with the help of the Blynk mobile app. Functional tests were performed to check whether the system streams photos and gives live notifications. The findings indicated that it was possible for the system to send an alert to the user when item quantities were less than a defined value and the results verified this visually with the mobile interface, which was remotely based. This item will enable customers to optimise their food purchasing plans by lowering the risk that food would expire and the need for unnecessary replenishment of products. In conclusion, it is shown that the support of inexpensive IoT components in home inventory systems can have a substantial positive effect on pantry management, on the reduction of food waste and on the support of more environmentally friendly consumption habits.