On Wednesday and Thursday, 7–8 January, a team of five Lower Sixth engineers attended a two-day workshop at UCL’s MechSpace. The team is working towards their Industrial Cadet Gold Award and, although self-sponsored this year, receive additional support through a collaboration with Oxford Sigma, a company specialising in fusion, nuclear, and defence systems.
The project, called FIFI (Food In Fridge Inventory), is a smart fridge companion designed to track product best-before dates, indicate which items should be used first, and generate AI-powered recipe suggestions. The system is built using a Raspberry Pi, a Waveshare serial scanner, and a touchscreen user interface. As the team is using a Raspberry Pi at the core of their design, they have also been entered into the PA Consulting Raspberry Pi Competition.
Over the course of the two days, the team worked intensively on coding, CAD, design, and physical assembly. It was great to see them collaborating effectively, engaging with other teams, and tackling challenges as they arose. The group also held two check-in calls with their mentors at Oxford Sigma to provide progress updates, receive professional oversight, and discuss next steps.
Here is what Maha had to say about the experience:
“This week we spent two days in MechSpace at UCL to work on our Gold Industrial Cadets Project. Our aim for these two days was to make as much progress as possible by beginning to bring components together. Our ‘Fridge Friend’ project aims to create a smart food and nutrition companion using a Raspberry Pi. The first day started with a quick briefing and introduction to the session, before we got going with our project. This involved planning the design of the user interface, 3D printing our casing, and setting up the barcode scanner. We continued the second day working hard, and managed to design the first graphical user interface, as well as 3D printing and editing our casing and scanner holder, and creating the cabling. We also had an insightful tour of the area to view student-made projects. After two successful days at MechSpace, we had made lots of progress, and the project enabled me to develop my teamwork, communication and problem-solving skills. Overall, it was a great and memorable experience!”
