2025 · Hardware / Robotics
Basil Home AI — Smart Refrigerator Inventory Engine
An embedded smart-fridge prototype running QNX RTOS on a Raspberry Pi with on-device grocery detection.
Hack the 6ix Winner · Deloitte Best Use of AI for Green
The problem
Food waste at home is a visibility problem: groceries get pushed to the back of fridge shelves, forgotten, and expire before anyone cooks them. Commercial smart fridges cost upwards of $4,000.
The constraint
A retrofittable unit must wake up instantly when the door closes, capture images in uneven fridge lighting, and run object detection locally on low-power hardware without draining power or lagging.
What I built
Configured BlackBerry QNX RTOS on a Raspberry Pi for deterministic, instant-on sensor response from door reed switches. An 8-bit quantized YOLOv5 model catalogs groceries in under 200ms, and the inventory is passed to the Gemini API to suggest personalized recipes built around items nearest their expiration date.
The outcome
Won Deloitte's "Best Use of AI for Green" at Hack the 6ix 2025 by demonstrating an end-to-end working prototype that cuts food waste through practical automation.