This study aims to develop a low-cost refractometer for measuring the sucrose content of fruit juice, which is an important factor affecting human health. While laboratory-grade refractometers are expensive and unsuitable for personal use, existing low-cost commercial options lack stability and accuracy. To address this gap, we propose a refractometer that replaces the expensive CCD sensor and light source with a conventional LED and a reasonably priced CMOS sensor. By analyzing the output waveform pattern of the CMOS sensor, we achieve high precision with a personal-use-appropriate accuracy of 0.1%. We tested the proposed refractometer by conducting 100 repeated measurements on various fruit juice samples, and the results demonstrate its reliability and consistency. Running on a 48 MHz ARM processor, the algorithm can acquire data within 0.2 seconds. Our low-cost refractometer is suitable for personal health management and small-scale production, providing an affordable and reliable method for measuring sucrose concentration in fruit juice. It improves upon the existing low-cost options by offering better stability and accuracy. This accessible tool has potential applications in optimizing the sucrose content of fruit juice for better health and quality control.
You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.