IoT-based automatic sugar weighing and packing for retail stores

Abstract

In Indonesia, the existence of a grocery store is critical because it provides a variety of staples in small amount and weight compared to those sold in minimarkets. Traditionally, the production of sugar retail is done by manually breaking down the weight from a very large quantity of 50 kg into small quantity such as 250 grams, 500 grams and 1000 grams. In addition, manual packing activities require a long time; therefore, decrease the productivity. In this study, an automatic tool is developed to carry out the sugar weighing and packing process automatically, and does not need human supervision because it can be controlled by a smartphone over a long distance or a keypad in a short distance. This tool is run by an Arduino microcontroller which regulates the weighing and packing mechanism repeatedly. The weighing mechanism involves a load cell and servo motors. Meanwhile, the packaging mechanism uses a stepper motor and a modified impulse sealer. Quantitative testing has been carried out for weighing results and gives the best accuracy of 99.2% for sugar weight of 250 grams. Qualitative testing has been carried out to observe the packaging resulting from the packing mechanism and produce a neat package for sugar weighing 250 grams.