Smart Kitchen:
Automatic Seasoning Dispenser
Context.
Food Safety
People regard food as a priority. In recent years, great efforts have been made to improve food safety, but there still exist many problems. Nowadays, many young people do not have solid cooking skills, or prefer takeaway because they find cooking too troublesome, which adds risk to food safety.
Hard To Follow Instructions from Cookbooks
In the current popular cookbooks on the market, the description of the amount of seasoning is used with ambiguous words such as "appropriate amount" and "a little", which is elusive; or it informs the amount under specific units, requiring the use of electronic scales and measuring cylinders to weigh, which is far too troublesome.
.Technical Route
Information Architecture
PCB
Cabinet Structure Design
Demonstration.
When we were finishing the project, the team members had to quarantine separately at home due to the epidemic and could not access the tools and equipment in the laboratory, so the project was completed very simply and crudely due to limited materials. This project was the first time I experienced the joy of being a maker, and it also gave me a preliminary but in-depth understanding of the whole process of developing a tech product, and a desire to do more challenging endeavors during my college years.
WeChat Mini Program:
Select a specific dish from the menu in the mini program, choose and output all the condiments required for the dish in order, as well as their quality/volume.
Liquid Measurement:
A miniature peristaltic pump is selected to meet the high precision requirements. The amount of liquid seasoning is measured by the microcontroller through timing. The peristaltic pump provides stable flow, strong reliability, and high accuracy.
Solid Measurement:
Using a mass sensor, the difference in mass before and after feeding is measured. The signal is transmitted to the microcontroller, which then controls the servo motor to rotate a certain angle to open or close the upper seasoning box, thereby achieving the measurement of a certain quantity of seasoning.