The Smart Nutrition Bottle Uses RFID Technology to Track the Usage of the Seasoning Pod

Recently, a beverage company has developed a product that supports RFID, which can track the taste of consumers using this product to make beverages, called Smart Nutrition Bottle.

The bottle allows users to create unique vitamin-rich beverages through separate pods (a kind of seasoning container), track what the user drank, and then capture and view this data in an iOS or Android-based application.

The bottle designed internally by the engineers can help consumers create the beverage taste they want and track how much they drink. Each beverage has three flavoring pods for seasoning. The company's vice president of engineering said that each pod contains concentrated beverages that can be individually flavored or mixed with other condiments.

Since the bottle was developed and launched a year ago, the company is now considering using RFID technology to track flavored pods for recycling management and customer reward programs. In order to uniquely identify the seasonings, the RFID tag of each pod is encoded with a unique ID number, product name and inventory unit, and the updateable capacity indicates how many seasonings are left in the pod. The built-in transceiver in the bottle can read and write label data, and the ultrasonic sensor can measure the amount of water in the 500mL bottle. The Bluetooth radio transmits the collected data to the user's application. Users can check how much data has been consumed, whether a specific flavor combination is sufficient, and place new orders in the application.

Consumers who use the bottle to buy the seasoning pod and then insert it into the empty slot at the bottom of the bottle. Seasoning pods usually provide 30 drinks, such as antioxidant blackberry raspberry, electrolyte citric acid and multivitamin peach. Users can mix and match, like mixing various flavors in drinking water to make their own beverages.

After inserting the pod, as long as the mobile phone is connected to the bottle's Bluetooth, consumers can view their own flavors in the app. Every time the user wants to make a drink, press the button on the side of the bottle, and then select the desired flavor. According to the user's choice, the bottle will be filled with appropriate spices. The ultrasonic sensor detects when the beverage is consumed. Each time the pod is dispensed, the transceiver reads its tag ID and writes new information to the tag to indicate the reduced part quantity.

The bottle can be synchronized with the user's mobile phone through the app, and its built-in Bluetooth transmitter sends the updated data to the user's mobile phone. The app will show which seasoning pods are in the bottle, the number of remaining servings, and the nutritional information of each pod. After consumers have used up the pod, they can send the pod back to the company headquarters through the "Mail Recycling Program".

The tag has 144 bytes of user memory for recording product information and remaining quantity. Choose to deploy NFC RFID within a short and reliable reading range, and then designed its own transceiver, and use hardware provided by NXP Semiconductors to read the label on the bottle. Each pod is equipped with 13.56 MHz NXP NTAG that meets the ISO 14443 standard.

The company's tracking of each pod begins before the consumer inserts it into the bottom of the bottle. During production, RFID tags are attached to each pod and a fixed reader is used to read these tags. At the same time, the pods are packaged and transported from the company's filling plant to the company headquarters. The tags will be read again at the headquarters, when they are put in storage, and when they are sent to consumers. The data is stored in the company's software for inventory management.

The pod has a mail recovery system. When the empty pod is received, the company will read the tag ID again. In the future, every time an empty pod is recycled, the system will keep an account in the consumer's account. This is a reward program that provides discounts or free products to people who recycle pods.