Perfect Portion

Baked Chicken Recipe
RFID Reader
User Display
Dispenser
Inside of Dispenser
Filled Spice
Perfect Portion Model
Perfection Portion Internal
Perfect Portion Container

Inspiration

Our spice dispenser serves multiple purposes. Often those who are new to cooking or want to learn more advanced recipes order preset recipe kits from companies like Hello Fresh or Every Plate. This dispenser is designed to help encourage them to continue cooking and to make it a fun experience. All they need to do is scan the recipe card, let the dispenser handle all the dry ingredients, and then all they need to worry about are the ingredients that require chopping. Once the chefs master the larger ingredients like cooking the chicken or chopping the peppers, then they can begin measuring out the ingredients themselves. This dispenser helps educate new cooks in their culinary efforts by simplifying the most common mistakes. The idea came from one of our teammates who struggles with cooking and measuring the dry ingredients. He has mistaken sugar for salt when cooking eggs. This can also help those who struggle with dyslexia. It eases their cooking experience and teaches them more recipes explore.

What it does

1) Buy spice containers in store. Containers are preloaded and have an RFID sticker attached. RFID sticker is populated with spice information. Buy, receive, or print recipes that have a QR code populated with spice information. 2) Scan RFID sticker at dispenser and select the canister it's placed in. Dispenser will tie the read RFID information to that canister location. 3) Scan QR code, located on recipe, at dispenser RFID reader. Dispenser will read dry ingredients. 4) Place bowl underneath dispenser. 5) Dispenser rotates through dry ingredients and dispenses the proper measurements based off of recipe. 6) Cook the perfect meal or dessert without fear of mismeasurement!

How we built it

Incorporated hardware, coding, and 3d printing to create a spice dispenser that utilizes RFID tags and QR code reading. The Arduino and the Raspberry Pi were the main microcontrollers.

Challenges we ran into

Connection to wifi kept dropping. Backup hardware or additional connection cables required.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Team distribution of work, ease of understanding of work, good assistance with issues

What we learned

RFID readers and chip are not the most reliable, motor torque is difficult with sprinkles adding resistance, wire management is required to keep project clean/presentable, display has specific settings based off of display size