There are two general directions for future improvements of this project. The first is to further improve the user experience, and the second is to provide a more complete service procedure.
For the former, our current burden is that the camera does not monitor what happens inside the shopping cart continuously, which may cause latency or even error, especially when taking item out of the shopping cart. As aforementioned, our solution for detecting what is taking out is that, when the weight measurement result decreases, we first wait for the scanning result of RFID scanner for several seconds. If the scanning result is none, the camera will take a photo and send to S3. The procedure can be improved by creating a buffer of photos, and tag them by timestamp. When the weight decreases, the Raspberry Pi can record a timestamp, and when it finds out the RFID tag is none later, it can upload the photo corresponding to this specific timestamp to S3.
For the latter, we are conceiving to enable users to check our through their mobile phones after they finish shopping. With the prevalence of digital wallets like Paypal, Venmo, Alipay, we can use their APIs to develop this functionality. Also, we can create credit card online payment channel by using services from some secure check-out service provider. We can even create a member system, such that users can create accounts and deposit money into their account in advance.
For the former, our current burden is that the camera does not monitor what happens inside the shopping cart continuously, which may cause latency or even error, especially when taking item out of the shopping cart. As aforementioned, our solution for detecting what is taking out is that, when the weight measurement result decreases, we first wait for the scanning result of RFID scanner for several seconds. If the scanning result is none, the camera will take a photo and send to S3. The procedure can be improved by creating a buffer of photos, and tag them by timestamp. When the weight decreases, the Raspberry Pi can record a timestamp, and when it finds out the RFID tag is none later, it can upload the photo corresponding to this specific timestamp to S3.
For the latter, we are conceiving to enable users to check our through their mobile phones after they finish shopping. With the prevalence of digital wallets like Paypal, Venmo, Alipay, we can use their APIs to develop this functionality. Also, we can create credit card online payment channel by using services from some secure check-out service provider. We can even create a member system, such that users can create accounts and deposit money into their account in advance.