A Smart Cooking Machine – Reflection & Demo
This post is the fourteenth and the last in a series detailing the processes behind the research, design, material selection, online audience building, fundraising, application development, assembly, and programming of a cooking machine. See the column Stories of Food & Tech here.
My reflection:
The truth is, I have felt bitter-sweet since I started writing this last post for my cooking machine. It has taken me on-and-off development for over a year to work through all the research, design, and machine development phases. I have learned so much about various food and engineering skills for my cooking machine development; these include things such as drilling holes in glass, using a 3D printer, programming a TFT touch screen, etc. I have also had so much fun learning them throughout the process. Most of all, this was the first project I have completed without any supervision from my professor, and it taught me about project management- an area in which I still have so much room for improvement. Often, I found it harder to push myself through the deadlines since I already had a lot of commitments. However, with the patience, encouragement, and guidance of my OOF editors, I could focus on getting my posts out fairly regularly and finally complete the whole column series!
Final Cooking Machine Result:
When I first started making this smart cooking machine. I thought it was an easy product to make. I mean, in theory, it only involved assembling a few electronic components, programming an application and printing out some 3D designs. So how hard could it be? However, as I started the development of the product, new technical issues continued to come up. It was fun to resolve these issues, except that this project took much longer than I expected to finish.
Over the last few weeks, I refined my motor supporter design and printed about five iterations of the motor supporter to fit it perfectly with the stirrer’s and glass lid’s positions. I also added gadgets to balance the motor's load on the motor supporter by using double arm-clippers and some thin white rope. The load-balancing section (highlighted in purple) is shown to the right of image 1.
Image 1. Cooking Machine – Modified Design with Motor Supporter
(Left: With the Glass Lid; Right: Without the Glass Lid)
Also, in image 1, you can see that the water pump’s tube is connected to a hole in the cooking pot’s glass lid in the left image. Initially, I intended to drill a second hole on the glass lid to connect the oil pump tube so that I could pump oil and water simultaneously; however, I shattered the glass lid when I tried to drill the second hole shown in image 2. As a result, I eventually removed the glass lid and allowed the pump to pump water & oil directly to the cooking pot shown in the right image of Image 1. Although drilling on the existing glass lid didn’t work, I know other methods could make it possible to put the glass lid on the cooking pot while pumping water and oil simultaneously. For instance, in the future, I could drill holes in the metal container(the cooking pot) itself or design a customized glass lid. But, for now, I kept it simple.
Image 2. Glass Hole-Drilling Setups + Shattered Glass Lid after Drilling a Hole
In video 1, you will find the illustrated function of the motor itself rotating the stirrer in the cooking pot. In video 2, you will see a completed cooking machine demo setup with the motor attached on top of the cooking pot through a self-designed arm rotating the stirrer, both the oil and water pumps pumping oil and water into the cooking pot, the thermistor sending temperature values of the cooking pot onto the TFT touch screen, and finally the TFT touch screen controlling the whole smart cooking machine.
Cooking Machine “TechChef” Application
I also want to show you the new software controls/display I implemented since the initial application development. I implemented three control buttons (oil, water, and motor) and one temperature display on the “Cook Now” page of the application. Each control button can be toggled ON and OFF, allowing the application to send control signals to an online database. Then, the Arduino, connected to Wi-Fi, retrieves the updated data of the control signals to control corresponding features on the cooking machine. In the meantime, the Arduino sends the thermistor information to the database, and the application retrieves the thermistor data to display the pot's temperature on the application screen.
Image 3. The TechChef Cooking Control Page
This process is also shown in video 3 (including the full application features displayed in previous posts).
Before the Column Ends(Yay!)
Some friends asked me if they could also make a smart cooking machine themselves? My answer is: “Of course!” Although it took me such a long time to finish the initial design, assembly, and programming of this smart cooking machine, it was totally worthwhile just for the fun of doing this project. For me personally, I have reached my goal of learning new and interesting engineering/design skillsets through this project and presenting food stories from my culture.
If you are also interested in learning some design/engineering/story-telling skillsets through projects, you can start your own project or try following my posts and make a smart cooking machine. I have also shared all my application source code on GitHub for anyone who might be interested. So feel free to download it and start playing with the application if your heart desires!
To wrap up, I just want to take a minute to thank all my readers for following along my “Stories of Food & Tech” column and learning about my journey of making a smart cooking machine! It has been such an honor. I know there are so many more features that I could add to and functions that I could optimize for my cooking machine! In the future, I’ll continue sending more IG posts to share more exciting food stories, my journey of learning about vegan food, and further cooking machine testing and optimization! Therefore, if you are interested, follow me @food_tech_stories. I hope you have enjoyed reading all my column posts and going on this fun journey with me! One day, maybe, you will also have your own project/column adventure! :)