An automatic fresh and consumable meat detection system.

Abstract

Meat freshness level is an important factor to determine meat quality for consumption. This system has been designed to automatically detect fresh and consumable meat in a very fast and non-destructive way. The system is implement into an ATmega238p microcontroller equipped with a pH sensor and gas sensors as the freshness identifier tools to replace the human olfaction and vision in determining fresh meat. The combination of the readings from the sensors is used to identify the meat's freshness. The system's inputs are the smell sensed by the gas sensors that’s MQ-7, MQ-4 and MQ-3 and a pH sensor for the acidity or alkalinity of the meat. Two meat samples have been tested, such as fresh meat or rotten meat. The usage of the three gas sensors and a pH sensor is capable of acquiring two distinct categories of meat quality statuses. The system has a high percentage of success but the small errors are due to the incremental in the gas sensor reading mostly in fresh meat and this is because the sensors are very sensitive to natural and organic compound smell. Thus it may be concluded that the system has is successful in identification of fresh meat and rotten meat and the implementation of this system is expected to replace the traditional methods by the human senses that is the nose and eyes.