Senior Design Expo 2019

- Automated Spice Dispenser
Sara Cummings, Connor Johnston, Josh
Katz, Brandon Kubick, David Reyes
Advisor: Josh Browne
Modern trends in American lifestyles
have led to a decrease in home cooking,
costing Americans thousands according to
USA TODAY [1]. While many justify this
spending in exchange for time saved, we
interviewed potential customers and found
that it was not only the time and mess that
discouraged individuals from cooking, but
simply the unawareness of what spices they
had and how to use them.
Our group decided to address these
customer needs by creating the PreSpice. The
PreSpice is not only an automated spice
dispenser that reduces the mess and
guesswork associated with cooking, but also
a cooking companion. By keeping track of
the user’s dried spices and offering recipe
inspiration based on user input, the PreSpice
introduces the user to new and exciting flavor
combinations. These design goals were
addressed by our team through integrating
hardware and software: making this project
just as much a programming challenge as it
was an engineering design challenge.
From a hardware perspective, we
needed to create a device that would store ten
different spices (the number we found to be
regularly used by a home chef), and dispense
them precisely without cross-contamination.
Additionally, it was critical to our design that
the user be able to refill containers when they
become low and swap out spices as they see
fit. Sensors were also utilized to accurately
control the hardware, including the
implementation of hall effect sensors and
photoresistors.
Currently, the device was made to
abide by ANSI standards for engineering
drawings and design. Additionally, future
container designs will follow FDA
regulations to satisfy material requirements
due to them being in contact with food. The
containers will also avoid sharp angles to
satisfy the FDA’s cleanability requirement.
Extensive software was created to
generate a user-friendly interface. This is
displayed on a touch screen that has been
integrated into the front of the PreSpice.
Here, the user can select pre-programmed
recipes or dispense spices individually. The
amount of each spice can be adjusted by the
user and saved as their custom version of the
recipe. Once spices are loaded into the
PreSpice, an on-board microcontroller crossreferences
the spices with recipes stored in
the database to determine what can be made
by the user.
Our vision is to create a kitchen
appliance that makes home-cooked meals
more accessible. Through our research, we
have found this to be a gap in the kitchen
appliance market, as measuring technology
has never been successfully automated on a
small scale. Though our product is currently
only a senior design project, we are pursuing
a patent and may continue development in the
future.
References:
[1] Martin, Emmie. “90% Of Americans
Don't like to Cook - and It's Costing Them
Thousands Each Year.” USA Today, Gannett
Satellite Information Network, Sept. 2017
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