Dr. C Soda Fountain

Welcome to Dr. C Soda Fountain Machine!

Meet our project team !

Marianita, Michelito, Britanita ! Our story started with an amateur sketch, a couple sodas, and some ideas that we later regretted.

We are three students who decided to make a super over-engineered soda fountain machine that incorporates the use of infrared sensors, a weight sensor, and an Arduino Mega.

The user experience is defined below...

1. The user needs to select the drink they would like using the keypad.
2. There is a choice of three different drinks.
   • Marianita's ice cold water
   • Michelito's fresh ice tea
   • Britanita's spritzing cola
3. We are committed to giving our customers options... Next, the LCD screen will ask if you would like a full or half cup of the drink selected.
4. The user will be asked to pay the amount displayed on the screen.
5. Once the user pays, it will allow the motor to be turned on.
6. The user places their cup under the drink they would like and the infrared sensor underneath the coaster will turn the motor on. A timer is set based on the setting chosen by the user (half cup or full cup).
   • NOTE: if the user did not pay, the motor will not turn on if the cup is placed over the infrared sensor. Stealing is not tolerated at Dr. C's Soda station! (We are broke students so we need the money...)
7. The user will then take their drink and ENJOY!

We are going to walk you through the steps we took to make our soda fountain machine.

First you need to gather the supplies...

1. Wood for the frame of the soda fountain machine. We used 3mm sheets of wood (45mm x 30mm).
2. Arduino Mega
3. LED screen
4. Keypad
5. 3 x DC 6V mini air pump motors
6. 1 x weight sensors
7. 3 x infrared sensors
8. 3 x 30A Relay
9. Cables for connecting circuit
10. Tubing
11. 3 x 1L bottles with drinks of your choice
12. 1 cup to enjoy your drink

• Drinks - The prototype allows for three different types of drinks to be placed in the back of the structure. The three circles on the front are not just circles! This is where the infrared sensors are located and when the cup is place on the circle the motor of the pump will be turned on.
• Money - The money is placed in the coin dispenser on the left. There is a slide that brings the money to the box where the weight sensor is placed to detect that the money has been inserted. There is an opening on the back to allow the money to be removed.
• Circuit - The circuit is placed under the slide in the money compartment.
• Pumps - The pumps are located in the top compartment of the structure.

We created our circuit in TinkerCad and tested our code.

A copy of the code is attached.

TinkersCad is cool and all; however..... building it is even cooler!! So now we will show you how to build our awesome soda fountain machine!

Build the frame of the soda fountain machine.

We used InkScape to create our 2D drawings to be cut by the printer.

We measured and cut the various pieces necessary to complete the structure. We drilled 8mm holes in the circle coasters to place the infrared sensors. We used wood glue to fix the structure.

We built the circuit in a FabLab!

We connected the weight sensor, which is used to capture that money was inserted into the machine.

We then connected the infrared sensors to the coasters and then to the relays and then to the arduino.

We connected the pumps to the circuit and the tubing to the bottles and pumps. The pumps push air into the bottles and then the drink is dispensed into the cup.

This sounded easier than it was...

Once the outside frame was created, we placed our circuit inside the base and fixed the components to the structure.

Since we borrowed most of our parts from our local FabLab, we did not permanently fix our components.

Find a FabLab near you! https://www.fablabs.io/labs/map.