You don’t have to be an extinct mammal or a Millennial to enjoy the smooth, buttery taste of an avocado. Being psychic on the other hand is definitely an advantage to catch that small, perfect window between raw and rotten of this divaesque fruit. But don’t worry, as modern problems require modern solutions, [Eden Bar-Tov] and [Elad Goldberg] built the AvoRipe, a device to notify you when your next avocado has reached that window.
Taking both the firmness and color of an avocado as indicators of its ripeness into account, the team built a dome holding a TCS3200 color sensor as stand for the avocado itself, and 3D printed a servo-controlled gripper with a force sensor attached to it. Closing the gripper’s arms step by step and reading the force sensor’s value will determine the softness the avocado has reached. Using an ESP8266 as centerpiece, the AvoRipe is turned into a full-blown IoT device, reporting the sensor readings to a smartphone app, and collecting the avocado’s data history on an Adafruit.IO dashboard.
There is unfortunately one big drawback: to calibrate the sensors, a set of nicely, ripe avocados are required, turning the device into somewhat of a chicken and egg situation. Nevertheless, it’s a nice showcase of tying together different platforms available for widescale hobbyist projects. Sure, it doesn’t hurt to know how to do each part from scratch on your own, but on the other hand, why not use the shortcuts that are at our disposal to remove some obstacles — which sometimes might include programming itself.
“what is my purpose?”
“you squeeze avocados”
“oh my god”
Awwww, I was hoping this was a general solution, all fruits have a narrow window between ripe and rotten these days (if they’re even ripe before they’re rotten) due to extended storage periods before you’re allowed to buy them. Seems it’s unpossible to buy fresh these days, if they keep 3 months, pick early and sour, in the fridge they go for 2 months 3 weeks, then you may purchase.
Mizpe Ramon is a place, not a person… ;o)
Oh dear. Now when I re-read it in their write-up, that makes indeed a lot more sense.
Removed Mr (?) Ramon from the list of contributors. Thanks :)
I believe the supermarkets use acoustic response to a tap on avocados to tell how far off their ideal ripeness they are.
I could imagine an ultrasonic sensor (or transducer) would be able to pick up the different stages of ripeness. Not sure if using the avocado as reflector, absorber or as part of a resonance system would get the best results. Definately a fun project to try for a dark day.
http://calavo.com/storepdfs/ProRipeVIP-Brochure.pdf
Seems like someone took this engineering problem really seriously! In the UK there’s a programme on TV about supermarkets and Asda (Walmart) was featured a couple of years ago using this technology (http://www.fruitnet.com/eurofruit/article/172569/asda-investment-adds-up-for-avocados)
This is indeed a first world food problem. Here in SE Asia, any half decent street vendor won’t sell you avocados unless they’re exactly ripe enough. You can even specify when you want to eat them and they’ll do a decent job getting you appropriate ones. Supermarkets have random quality though.
The large seed in the really good ones here rattles slightly when you shake them, but that might just be the local variety. That should be easy enough to detect!
A number of things make me thing the world has lost it’s mind.
The surge in popularity of avocados is one of them.
Knowing they are healthy, I’m proud of the fact that I have mostly broken myself of the involuntary wretch I used to get whenever I swallow something with avocado in it.
I think that’s about as good as it’s going to get for me.
Thanks a lot for sharing our project, it means a lot to us!
A small thing, my co-creator’s name is Elad Goldberg and not Elan Goldberg.
Best regards!
Argh, my brain is playing tricks on me, I was sure I triple checked to have it right. Sorry about that, it’s fixed now.
Thank you!
So cool you liked it.
Best regards!
QUIT SQUEEZING THE AVOCADOS AT THE STORE YOU APES!
A ripe avocado has the top stem structure like a scab, if it is about to fall off it is ripe.
This project is stupid as dirt.
Sounds like someone squeezed you a little too hard…