Report from last week is joined together with this week’s report since the website was down. Most of the time has been spent waiting for parts to arrive. New parts were ordered this week to account for the changes in the design.

Some time was spent fixing the design of the pump motors. Using softer tubing and stronger stepper motors did the trick.

Improved design

We improved the design of the machine. The new design uses a 20x20mm V-slot aluminium extrusion for moving the drinking glass around. Two wheels will be mounted on each side of the extrusion, in a similar manner to what is pictured below. Beneath, a belt connected to a motor will control the movement of the actual glass.

Joints to connect the pipes are to be 3D printed.

Initially, we explored the concept of using QR codes to detect the volume of a

given glass. The idea was to put a sticker beneath the glass, which would be scanned by an underlying camera upon inserting the glass. However, we’ve gone on to explore solutions involving object recognition to determine the volume of the glass. 

We set up a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino, and connected these two together through serial communication. The Raspberry Pi will host a server which will be responsible for handling incoming requests, while the Arduino will be responsible for controlling the motors. The Arduino is convenient for dealing directly with the hardware.