Contents

1.1 Background....................................................................................................................................1
1.2 Problem Statement........................................................................................................................1
1.3 Proposed System............................................................................................................................2
1.4 Project Objective...........................................................................................................................2
1.5 Project Scope..................................................................................................................................3
1.6 Literature Review..........................................................................................................................3
1.6.1 RFID Based Wireless Intelligent Cart Using ARM7 (Suraj.S, Vishal Guruprasad,
Udayagiri R Pranava, Preetham S Nag, 2016)..............................................................................3
1.6.2 Developing a Multitasking Shopping Trolley Based on RFID Technology (Satish
Kamble, Sachin Meshram, Rahul Thokal, Roshan Gakre, 2014)................................................4
1.6.3 Smart Shopping Cart with Automation Billing System through RFID and Bluetooth
(Prateek Aryan, Prof. Priya Pise, Rakesh Patil, Kaustubh Pittulwar, 2014)..............................4
1.7 Project Methodology.....................................................................................................................5
1.7.1 Hardware Requirements........................................................................................................5
1.8 Project Budget...............................................................................................................................7
1.9 Project Timeline.............................................................................................................................8
1.10 References....................................................................................................................................9

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1.0 Introduction
Nowadays, shopping market rely on barcode technology for their groceries. This technology
is outdated and less effective because it requires line of sight technology during scanning
where the barcode tags must be oriented in a specific direction. Besides that, shopping
trolleys currently being used all over the world are simple carrying basket with wheels as an
added facility. These trolleys do not respond in any ways to the user and just serve the
purpose of carrying the items to be bought by the person. This leads to a significant problem
during a low fare price or weekends in shopping malls, such as spending more time at the
billing counter due to the increased number of customers and the slow barcode technology for
scanning products. This shopping experience is less effective and time consuming for the
customer during shopping. The proposed system in this project will use RFID technology for
all the groceries. This way, the system is more effective in term of scanning because the tags
can be oriented in any direction.

1.1 Background
In this rapidly changing era, the innovation of technologies evolves at an exponential rate.
Many companies are investing into developments which ensure satisfaction for all stages of
consumers. One of the most common developments is technologies in customer service
which promises new and robust systems for shoppers. Shopping carts, which are also
commonly known as shopping trolleys are a method of transportation of goods temporarily
before cashing out. Shopping carts have limited changes made since its invention. Most of the
expansions have been done is to modify its capacity and weight. However, due to the
improvement of technology, some of the company’s research have been developed a
convenient shopping system to customer. For example, there is a touch panel and bar code
scanner attached on the shopping trolley, the customer can be informed about the promotion
and location of goods from the touch panel.

1.2 Problem Statement

The shopping trolleys currently being used all over the world are simple carrying basket with
wheels as an added facility. These trolleys do not respond in any ways to the user and just
serve the purpose of carrying the items to be bought by the person.
During low fair prices, weekends or special festivals, over budget issues happen due to
special sales or impulse buying in shopping malls. These issues happen frequently because
shopping cart do not have capabilities to calculate the total cost for the groceries each time a

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shopper add an item into the shopping cart. Because of this, they might miss out some of the
items they wanted to buy before shopping.

We need a real time feedback system which will influence the way of shopping and allow
shoppers to monitor how much they spend during shopping.

Another drawback currently in supermarkets and malls is the conventional barcode system.
The problem with such system is that it can scan only a single item at a given time. This
system requires workers to scan one by one for the groceries, this is because it requires the
grocery to orient in a specific direction during scanning. Customers spend a significant
amount of time waiting in lines. Waiting in long lines has a bad impact on people's moods
and can lead to misunderstandings or confrontation, such as when someone cuts in line and
stands in front of others. This also consumes a lot of time during the billing process.
So, we have come across a far better solution through our project which helps in effective
time management during billing process.

1.3 Proposed System

The proposed system is a real time feedback system to be implemented on shopping carts, the
system will allow shoppers to add the shopping list, then the system will display the price
against each item on the list and the total amount for all items on the list. It will allow
shoppers to monitor how much they spend during shopping in real time.
The system will allow shoppers to modify the list in case they want to add or remove items
on the shopping list.
We have in our project added a feature through which the person gets the bill amounts of
his/her products or items kept on the cart itself. The system uses a RFID system which is well
known for scanning multiple items at a given time. The RFID reader will be mounted on each
cart and as soon as the customer starts keeping items in the cart, the RFID reader starts
scanning the tags on each item and displays the total bill amount on the LCD which is
attached along with the RFID reader upon the cart. Thus, our Smart Trolley provides a Real
Time Response to the people using it. It will also speed up checkout process since barcode
scanning is eliminated.

1.4 Project Objective

The main objective is to reduce the time spent during the wait in the queue at the billing
counter. Other objectives include

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  Improve the speed of purchase by using RFID technology.

 To alert the user when over budget detected.

1.5 Project Scope

This project aims to develop an over budget detection system on the shopping trolley. In
order to solve the problem stated, user has to enter a budget amount before start using the
system. A real-time feedback system will be developed on top of the shopping trolley which
will allow user to monitor how much they spend during shopping. Besides, this shopping
trolley will also scan each of the product user put inside the trolley by using a RFID scanner.
Each time they put the groceries inside the trolley, the LCD display will display the
information of the item and price. Furthermore, the processing tools used in this project is
microcomputer Raspberry Pi 3 with a connected RFID module. The RFID module is used to
scan the RFID tag from the products while Raspberry Pi will be processing the information
and retrieve the data from the database. After the data retrieved, the information will display
on the 16x2 LCD where it connected to Raspberry Pi. When over budget detected by the
system, an alert sound will notify the user and they can start to select different options to
overcome the issue. Finally, this smart trolley system targeted to all customer in the shopping
market.

1.6 Literature Review

The following are some of the similar systems which are already in existence.
1.6.1 RFID Based Wireless Intelligent Cart Using ARM7 (Suraj.S, Vishal Guruprasad,
Udayagiri R Pranava, Preetham S Nag, 2016)
Suraj.S, Vishal Guruprasad, Udayagiri R Pranava and Preetham S Nag have conducted a
project to build an intelligent cart using ARM7 and RFID technology. They explored an
automatic identification by using RFID that help to benefits the quality of service provided by
the retailers. They use modernized equipment for shopping cart that help to reduce the
waiting time at the billing counter. This system is implemented in each of the shopping cart.
All the items will be equipped with a unique RFID tag. When the customer put the desired
products in the trolley, the RFID tag is scanned by the reader, the product name and prices
are display on the LCD screen. Furthermore, this system manages to calculate the total cost
automatically. The ZigBee module is used to transfer the billing data to the counter computer.
This system is time-effective for the user. Other than that, there are some limitations in this
system. For example, latency time of the communication between the devices and the server.

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Besides, ZigBee can easily be intercepted during transmitted data whenever the operating
frequency is same.

1.6.2 Developing a Multitasking Shopping Trolley Based on RFID Technology (Satish

Kamble, Sachin Meshram, Rahul Thokal, Roshan Gakre, 2014)
Another system proposed by Kamble, Meshram, Thokal and Gakre in 2014 had focused on
the scalability, affordable, and multitasking shopping trolley system. This system consists of
three mains part. Firstly, Server Communication component (SCC) maintained the
connectivity between the cart and server. This component offers a more secure way during
transferring the data between the cart and the server. For example, when customer finish
shopping, the purchasing list will be transferred under a secure method to shopping list
database. User Interface and display component (UIDC) provide a user-friendly interface for
customer to review the status of the items in the trolley. Whereas Automatic billing
component (ABC) handles the billing were associates with SCC components. All of these
components have to work together in order to perform some associated tasks.
The advantage of this project is to increase the speed of purchasing during shopping. With the
use of RFID based security system, user does not need to wait longer in the shopping mall
during purchasing for groceries. Moreover, this system has a database web management by
using .net framework. Hence, the user can easily login into the database to view for their
purchases. This will help them to improve the efficiently during shopping because they would
not need to verify each of the items separately. Furthermore, the RFID technology is much
effective compared to barcode technology which is slow and less effective.
There are some limitations in this system. Firstly, reliability is one of the issues for this
system. Malfunction happens if one of the components stop services. For example, if the
server communications component is stop functioning, this system will also stop functioning
because most of the components are rely on each other in this system.

1.6.3 Smart Shopping Cart with Automation Billing System through RFID and
Bluetooth (Prateek Aryan, Prof. Priya Pise, Rakesh Patil, Kaustubh Pittulwar, 2014)
Another smart shopping cart system proposed by Aryan, Rise, Tamhane, Patil and Pittulwar
has focuses on the automation billing system through RFID and Bluetooth. There are two
major perspectives in this system. RFID technology was used to identify products
automatically within specifies ranges and proceed to the billing system. Bluetooth used for
communication between cart and mobile devices. Once the RFID tags are scanned by the
scanner, the product information is sent to EEPROM then to central billing system through

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Bluetooth. The central billing system will immediately collect the data and calculate the total
amount for that particular cart. Each time the product being scanned, the data is sent to the
user’s mobile device via Bluetooth.

One of the advantages of this system is the shopping cart has the ability to calculate the total
bills automatically and display the total prices on the mobile devices. This feature makes it
easy for the customer to know how much they have spent when shopping. The integration
between RFID and Bluetooth makes the system intelligent and easy to use.
One limitations of this system it requires each user to have a smart phone when shopping.
Also, Bluetooth can have connectivity and range issues, malfunction will happen if the user is
not within distance range between the cart and a mobile device.

1.7 Project Methodology

In this project, the system development methodology used is prototyping model. The reason
for choosing this model is that it performs phase analysis, design phase and implementation
phase concurrently. Thus, it will help the project to shorten the time for building a working
prototype. By using the model, user can actually understand more on this system earlier
instead of waiting for the final system to be complete. As the results, this gives the system
designer a much clearer and understanding about the application for user during design phase.
Besides, this model also allows any unclear requirements or possible errors to be detect in the
early phase. Other than that, changes and additional requirements can be implement to this
prototype model easily. Lastly, refinements will be carried out repeatedly until a final product
produced that meets all the requirements.

1.7.1 Hardware Requirements

A. Raspberry Pi 3 Model B

The Raspberry Pi 3 is the core component for this system. Although this device is tiny but it
is capable to run multiple tasks at the same time. It also can perform almost all the functions
that a Linux PC can.

Figure 1: Raspberry Pi 3 Model B

B. 16GB MicroSD Card

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This microSD card is used to store both operating system and basic programs for the
Raspberry Pi 3. This capacity is enough to store all the required files.

Figure 2: 16GB MicroSD CARD

C. 2.5A, 5.1V Micro USB B Power Supply
Power supply is used for the Raspberry Pi 3 in the prototype demonstration.

D. 16x2 I2C Enabled LCD screen

A 16cm * 2cm screen is used to display the information of the product for this project. The
16x2 I2C enabled LCD screen is connecting to Raspberry PI via 5V pin, Ground pin, SDA
pin and SCL pin.

Figure 3: 16X2 I2C Enabled LCD

E. Mifare RC522 RFID Modules

The Mifare RC522 modules is used for this project to communicates with the RFID tags
with the use of 13.56MHz electromagnetic field, then sends the data to Raspberry Pi
through SPI communication.

Figure 4: Mifare RC522 RFID Module

F. RFID Tags

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A passive type of RFID tag is used for this project. The unique values of the RFID tag will be
assigned to selected product.

Figure 5: RFID tags

G. Other Components (Jumper Wire, Buzzer, Push Button, Breadboard)
Jumper wire is an electrical wire where it used to connect the RFID modules and Raspberry
Pi. Breadboard is a construction base for prototyping where it used to connect buzzer and
raspberry pi to form a basic circuit. Buzzer is a beeper device that use for alert purposes in
this project.
H. Personal Computer (Laptop)
Window based operating system laptop was used to run the Mobaxterm and Fritzing
application. As the embedded device has the limited resource, some of the resource works
will tested on Window OS before transfer to Raspberry Pi.

1.8 Project Budget

Table 1: Project Budget

Items Costs

Raspberry Pi 3 Model 3 K1500

16GB MicroSD Card K150

Micro USB Power Supply K100

RFID Module K500

RFID tags K300

Buzzer K200

Jumper Wires K100

Total Costs K2850

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1.9 Project Timeline
Table 2: Project Timeline

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1.10 References
1. Aryan, P., Pise, P. & Tamhane, S., 2014. Smart Shopping Cart with Automatic Billing
System through RFID and Bluetooth. International Journal for Research in Applied
Science & Engineering Technology.

2. T. Kohtsuka, T. Onozato, H. Tamura, S. Katayama, and Y. Kambayashi, "Design of a

Control System for Robot Shopping Carts," in Knowledge-Based and Intelligent
Information and Engineering Systems. vol. 6881, A. König, A. Dengel, K.
Hinkelmann, K. Kise, R. Howlett, and L. Jain, Eds., ed: Springer Berlin Heidelberg,
2011, pp. 280-288.

3. Singh, D. G. & Sharma, M., 2015. Barcode technology and its application in libraries
and Information centers. International Journal of Next Generation Library and
technology.

4. Yewatkar, A. et al., 2016. Smart Cart with Automatic BIlling, Product Information,
Product Recommendation Using RFID & Zigbee with Anti-Theft. s.l., International
Conference on Communication, Computing and Virtualization.

5. SunFounder, 2018. Mifare RC522 RFID Module. [image]. [Online] Available at:
https://www.sunfounder.com/rc522-card-read.html [Accessed 18 Feb 2023].

6. Certification, I. E., 2015. Prototyping Model. [image]. [Online] Available at:

http://istqbexamcertification.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Prototypemodel.jpg
[Accessed 20 Feb 2023].