Monitoring of Temperature in Retail Refrigerated Cabinets Applying IoT Over Open-Source Hardware and Software

José Ramírez-Faz; Luis Manuel Fernández-Ahumada; Elvira Fernández-Ahumada; Rafael López-Luque

doi:10.3390/s20030846

Monitoring of Temperature in Retail Refrigerated Cabinets Applying IoT Over Open-Source Hardware and Software

Sensors (Basel). 2020 Feb 5;20(3):846. doi: 10.3390/s20030846.

Authors

José Ramírez-Faz¹, Luis Manuel Fernández-Ahumada², Elvira Fernández-Ahumada³, Rafael López-Luque⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Córdoba, Campus de Rabanales, 14071 Córdoba, Spain.
² Department of Computing and Numeric Analysis, University of Córdoba, Campus de Rabanales, 14071 Córdoba, Spain.
³ Department of Mathematics, University of Córdoba, c/San Alberto Magno s/n, 14071 Córdoba, Spain.
⁴ Department of Applied Physics, University of Córdoba, Campus de Rabanales, 14071 Córdoba, Spain.

Abstract

The control of refrigeration in the food chain is fundamental at all stages, with special emphasis on the retail stage. The implementation of information and communication technologies (IoT, open-source hardware and software, cloud computing, etc.) is representing a revolution in the operational paradigm of food control. This paper presents a low-cost IoT solution, based on free hardware and software, for monitoring the temperature in refrigerated retail cabinets. Specifically, the use of the ESP-8266-Wi-Fi microcontroller with DS18B20 temperature sensors is proposed. The ThingSpeak IoT platform is used to store and process data in the cloud. The solution presented is robust, affordable, and flexible, allowing to extend the scope of supervising other relevant parameters in the operating process (light control, energy efficiency, consumer presence, etc.).

Keywords: IoT; cloud computing; open-source hardware and software; retail cabinet refrigeration; temperature control.