We are living in a smart age where most of the gadgets in our daily life are automated and autonomous. Those that are still not up to the level of modern day smartness are being worked upon. Keeping all this in mind, don’t you find it rather amusing when you forget to bring something from the grocery store? Stupid human, you remember you ran out of it, however, it just slipped your mind when you went shopping. In order to fix this, a gadget by the name of GeniCan has been introduced. The gadget gets attached to the trashcan and can be used for scanning the barcodes of the items that you throw in trash. These items can then be added to the shopping list.
The mounting mechanism comes as part of the package. It consists of a magnetic panel that attaches to the trash can using adhesive strips and holds onto the GeniCan. The gadget has been designed to work with rectangular, square, metal and plastic trashcans. Mountings for cabinet and wall are also available with a counter-top bracket being worked upon.
The gadget can rely on an internal battery for power or can be connected with the mains. The battery can last for a total of 7 days (depending upon usage) and can be charged overnight once it runs out of juice. After the gadget is installed, you have to connect it to your home Wi-Fi network. This allow it to carry out cross-referencing of the scanned barcodes against a UPC database and sending of data to its cloud service. The data is then sent from cloud to the accompanying smartphone application.
Once an item is scanned, it can be added to the shopping list. If there are any coupons pertaining to the item, they can be recorded as well. You have to hold an item in front of the GeniCan if it doesn’t have a barcode, the sensor upon sensing it shall ask you what you need to add to the shopping list. Voice-to-text technology relies on the integrated microphone to record your answer and acts accordingly. Items in the shopping list are sorted in aisle types to allow for easy browsing once you are in the shop.
As of now, an Indiegogo campaign is being run to raise funds for GeniCan. You can pre-order one unit with a pledge of $119. If all goes well and according to plan, shipments will begin in September, 2015.