Hacking A Cold One

Front view of the beverage display.
The "brains" of the fridge, from top: Pi camera, electromagnet, Raspberry Pi, Arduino Uno (back).
Removing a drink triggers a limit switch, as indicted by a blue LED.

Inspiration

Have you ever had your friends over, only to find your fridge mysteriously empty hours later? Hack a Cold One is an internet of things smart fridge in order to alleviate this issue. The fridge manages inventory, access, and transactions through a combination of different technologies to solve this problem!

What it does

Face detection for unlocking
Tracks the status of drinks inside
Inventory management
Processes payments

How we built it

Hack a Cold One is a internet of things smart fridge. A Raspberry Pi is used as the central control unit for the fridge connect with a plethora of sensors through an Arduino Uno and a camera module. The Uno uses digital I/O pins to connect to the four switches beneath the drinks, and acts as a digital switch for the electromagnetic switch. The Raspberry Pi communicates with a middle tier server hosted through a web tunnel on our laptop. The mid tier will then manage all the information about units and door lock information, then return information to the Pi and the front created in Angular. The client will manage separate Microsoft API calls that are synced with the Raspberry Pi.

Challenges we ran into

The electromagnet, which requires a fairly high current and voltage to operate, required significant tinkering to operate successfully. We occasionally found ourselves locked out of our own fridge! There was also huge issues connecting all the technologies together.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Utilization of multiple technologies and hardware to create a smart fridge. The fridge successfully operates as intended. We were able to integrate hardware with software and ensure smooth communication.

What we learned

None of us had experience using Arduinos to collect sensor data, especially in the context of serial communication with a Raspberry Pi. We learned how to communicate with our hardware, and how to power an electromagnet.

What's next for Hacking A Cold One

Improved security, speed improvements, and retail production.

Built With

Submitted to

HackTX 2017
- Winner Best Hack Involving a Financial Transaction (HBK Capital Management)
- Winner Use Mongo the Best!! (MongoDB)
- Winner SSO Challenge (ViaSat)

Created by

I worked on the the hardware of the entire fridge. I learned how to control an electromagnet (a high current inductive load) using an arduino, as well as sensing cans using limit switches.

Blake Karwoski
Aspiring Robotics Engineer
Himank Yadav
Hackathon Hacker
Nicholas Tiner
Juliang Li
Kevin J Nguyen