Automatic Data Acquisition and Monitoring Device to Indicate the Freshness of Milk during Transportation

Abstract

Abstract: Milk is a nutrient-rich liquid food and it is the primary source of nutrition and a cheap source of protein for large vegetarian population living in India. Dairy industry in India is the world's largest milk producer and dominates about 13% of world milk production. Milk contains several groups of nutrients & considerable amount of organic substances and functional elements such as traces of vitamins, enzymes & dissolved gases, dissolved salts, calcium, water, carbohydrates, proteins, fats, complex & simple lipids, minerals, vitamins , etc.,. Milk transportation has shown to contribute to a greater extent to milk spoilage. Most of the milk which has been rejected by milk processing plants had samples which indicate milk of good quality at farm level before transportation. Milk processors request that milk must be cooled to 2°C to 4°C within 2 to 3 h of milking. The monitoring system that we have implied here is to check the temperature throughout the transportation using micro-controller and to ensure the quality of the milk. This monitoring device consist of NTC Temperature sensor to indicate the exposure to excessive temperature and controlled temperature like cold storage and a gas sensor is used to detect the spoilage of milk while transportation. The RFID tags are used to record the information of the vendor, temperature and how much litre they are giving to the society and hereby, the complete record of this is maintained separately by data acquisition system with the open source software cayenne. In this monitoring device, the temperature of the milk is continuously monitored using microcontroller and an immediate alert message is given to the driver and admin when there is raise in temperature. Keywords: Milk, cayenne, data acquisition, RFID, NTC