Automatic Mighty Drink Maker!

One happy night we went with our friends to a nightclub to make our student life more pleasant. After a while, we noticed that the continuous lines at the bar caused a significant delay in serving the drinks. Then we came up with the idea to make a fully automatic device for preparing basic drinks. Immediately a few questions arose: does it pay off, who would want such a device, how would it work... The best way would be to build it and find out!

The first thing I did the next day was check the current solutions. There are some interesting devices, but in my opinion, they are mostly broken by too high a price.

I gathered my thoughts in one place and listed the assumptions of this project:

1. Well-presented housing

2. Only contactless payments (by card, telephone)

3. Fast customer service

4. Possibility to make up to 10 types of drinks

5. Intuitive operation

6. Power supply - 12V power supply / batter

1. Place the glass in the designated place

2. The glass is detected by the IR LEDs

3. Turning on the RGB diodes

4. Selecting the appropriate drink from the menu

5. Fee

6. Making a drink

7. Message about the end of the process

The purpose of the prototype was to test the basic functions of the device, i.e. the drink pump, RGB LEDs, keypad, display, and infrared LEDs. I made a test schematic, designed the PCB, and wrote a program that is responsible for carrying out the above-mentioned activities.

Based on the assumptions, I created an electronic diagram in Altium Designer. It is an ideal program for both beginners and professionals dealing with PCB design. In the description of this video, there is a link that allows you to test this program for 15 days without any fees!

The heart of the device is the Arduino nano, to which I connected several other devices:

RGB LEDs for glass illumination or other lighting effects.

Buttons for navigating through the menu on the display.

IR diodes detecting the presence of glass for a drink.

OLED display facilitating communication between the device and the human.

Driver for motors with the possibility of regulating the motor speed.

After creating the schematic, I designed the PCB and ordered it from PCBWay (They have prepared a great Christmas event with interesting prizes - link to the event). On their website, there is an interesting option to preview the board after uploading Gerber files and it is very similar to the actual PCB. After a few days, I received my shipment and was very pleased with the build quality of these boards so I could go on to soldering the components but had to sort them all out first.

I started by soldering the necessary wires, then I soldered the ARK connectors and Arduino to the PCB. I connected the wires to the connectors according to the previously prepared diagram. That's it for soldering!

To make sure that each component was working properly, I connected and tested them one by one. Thanks to this, I probably saved a lot of time for possible corrections. After I tested them all, combined all the codes into one, made a few corrections, and was able to consider the prototype complete.

The first part of the project is complete, all components have been tested and are working as intended. For testing, I used ordinary motors, but in the final device, I will use a liquid pump. In the coming days, I will be delving into the topic of contactless payments and considering housing.