Self Flipping Spatula

For my hackathon this month I made a self flipping spatula. What I did was take a regular spatula and make it so that it flips things at the press of a button. I made this because there is a dish I like to make at home but the yolks always break. This was meant to solve that problem. However, his spatula can also have applications in the medical field to allow people who have poor motor control for reasons beyond their control, such as Parkinsons, to make food that they would not be able to make otherwise.

• Spatula
• Wires
• Food Grade glue
• Arduino
• Servo Motor
• Buttons
• Hot glue
• Solder
• Soldering Iron
• Scissors (or something to cut the spatula)

To start, set up a simple circuit with the arduino that turns a servo motor when a button is pressed. This is simple to find online and that is what I did. After that, you need to wire everything up to the spatula. After everything is wired, make sure to solder the wires together to make sure that they will not fall apart.

After you have all of the wires set up, you then have to glue them to to actual spatula. I recommend using the food grade glue because it is heat resistant but remember that these glues usually take 24 hours to dry completely. After the glue is dry, hook the arduino up to a computer and put in the code that is at the end of the page. Then, as long as the arduino has power, the spatula should work perfectly.

#include <Servo.h>

Servo myservo; // create servo object to control a servo // twelve servo objects can be created on most boards

int pos = 0; // variable to store the servo position int btpn = 2; int buttonState = 0; void setup() { myservo.attach(9); // attaches the servo on pin 9 to the servo object pinMode(btpn, INPUT); Serial.begin(9600); }

void loop() {

buttonState = digitalRead(btpn);

Serial.println(buttonState);

if (buttonState == HIGH) //pos = 0; for (pos = 0; pos <= 270; pos += 1)

{ myservo.write(pos);

delay(10); } }