Designing a Wireless Temperature Sensor for meat processing

The process used for cooking and meat processing in an industrial process is a very rigorous one.  The meat has to be cooked to a certain temperature to ensure the safety of the product, and done on a large scale to optimize efficiency of production.  Internal temperature sensing is how the industry ensures that all the food is cooked to the right temperature.  This process is easier said than done.  Typically, a wired probe is placed into the meat and read every minute, according to FDA regulations.  These probes have a major shortcoming.  The cable that gets damaged frequently.   Matrix Product Development has designed a wireless temperature probe that senses the temperature.  Designing this temp probe came with many challenges of its own.

Designing a wireless temperature measurement sensor for meat processing

It took over 3 years to design an accurate and reliable temperature measurement sensor for the meat processing industry.  Frequency of operation, product enclosure and data collection methods were carefully designed to accommodate the harsh conditions these wireless temperature measurement sensors operate in.

The frequency of operation needed to be chosen carefully.   The meat processing oven is basically a giant metal box.  The higher frequencies have a hard time going through metals and liquids at low power or have problems with longer distance of travel.  433 MHz was chosen for the frequency of operation to allow for the clearest signals in the environment it operates in.

A New Standard in Meat Processing:  Wireless Temp Measurement

The FDA requires that the internal temperature of meat be measured once every minute during meat processing and cooking.  This is to ensure that the meat is cooked to the proper temperature and also cooled at the correct rate.  Traditional methods of doing this include either inserting a cabled thermocouple or a meat thermometer into the product.  The problem with the cabled thermocouples is the fact that they have cables.  These greatly restrict their ability to move around in the cramped industrial ovens and are also a weak point that is susceptible to breaking.  The problem with the meat thermometer is that it has to be manually checked, which means opening the oven to check.  Matrix Product Development has spent the last three years developing and producing a wireless solution for meat processing.

Dead Reckoning: Finding Your Way Inside

Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) are in most portable electronic devices that can connect to a network.  This technology has revolutionized travel.  They essentially eliminated the ability to get lost, assuming the user knows how to operate it.  This technology only really works outside though.  What about when someone wants to know how to navigate inside a building?  Dead Reckoning, or a system that can remember where a device has been in a room/building, could be an answer to this problem. 

Ultra-Low Power Bluetooth

There are over 2 billion devices in use today that are Bluetooth capable.  These devices are used in a wide variety of applications, from the standard wireless earpiece for the cell phone and wireless connections for gaming devices, to healthcare and wireless security applications.  As with every wireless industry, however, battery life is a big issue.  Out of the desire for greater battery life, Ultra-Lower Power (ULP) Bluetooth was born.

RFID to Revolutionize the Grocery Shopping Experience

Everything is going wireless nowadays.  Think of everything that can be done on your phone or computer that was inconceivable ten years ago.  Security companies are setting cameras up in homes so people can monitor activity from their phone when they are not home.  Cable companies are allowing people to access their home DVR systems through their phones and computers to watch TV recordings anytime.  The possibilities are becoming endless on what can be accomplished through handheld devices.  Now imagine some of those same technologies entering local grocery and convenience stores to help with the shopping process.

NFC on smartphones:  a safety assurance

One of the big tech advancements coming in 2012 will be the addition of NFC, or near field communication, to smartphones.   The iPhone 5 due out in June 2012 will surely have the technology.  What is NFC exactly?  It will allow your smartphone to talk back and forth with other devices, such as payment kiosks and check-in’s.  Think of going to a store and instead of getting a credit card out of your wallet, simply swipe you smartphone at the checkout and your account will automatically be charged.  No carrying cards or cash.  Projections are that 1 in 5 cell phones will have NFC technology by 2013. 

RFID And Shopping

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an important complementary technology. In the 1980's, there was a push to barcode all items at stores. The change in the shopping experience was dramatic. You no longer needed to wait for check-out staff to tabulate totals or compute savings from coupons. For management, prices could be set at a central location.

GPS and RFID

Passive radio frequency tags are relatively inexpensive to manufacture and embed with a small amount of binary information. This allows them to become a “Swiss army knife” solution to a multitude of problems, such as inventory management, pet identification, or personnel tracking. There seems to be few places the tags aren't being put.

A Year Away From The Office