While it may seem like every morning and the hours thereafter are coffee day, today is indeed National Coffee Day. Let’s face it, engineers, students and Makers alike all enjoy a good cup ‘o joe, or two, or three. Whether it’s a home brewed pot or a skinny frappa-thingy at a nearby coffee shop, the beverage has certainly become the unofficial technology behind engineers for years.
To commemorate the day, we’ve compiled ten of our favorite caffeine-inspired designs that will certainly perk you up…
1. An ATmega328 powered, fully-automated coffee bean roaster made from an ordinary popcorn machine.
2. Tweet-a-pot lets you make a pot of coffee from anywhere at anytime using Twitter and an ATmega168 based Arduino.
3. A PID-controlled home espresso machine that provides commercial quality temperature and pressure consistency using Arduino.
4. 3D printing a full-size coffee mug with an megaAVR based RepRap.
5. Over the past year, Starbucks has doubled the number of its Clover coffee-brewing machines, which connect to the cloud and track customer preferences, enable recipes to be digitally updated, assist baristas remotely monitor a coffee maker’s performance, and allow connected fridges to alert staff when a carton of milk has spoiled.
6. Light up your living room with this LED coffee table driven by an Arduino Mega (ATmega1280).
7. IoT… Internet of Tables? Developed at the MIT Media Lab, the Facebook Coffee Table listens to your conversations and displays photos from your Facebook page whenever they are appropriate to the conversation.
8. Nescafé recently debuted a 3D-printed Alarm Cap, which awakens caffeine enthusiasts with the sweet sounds of nature. In order to switch off the alarm, the user opens the lid and is greeted with the invigorating smell of Nescafé coffee. This eye-opening (literally) design was created with Shapeways 3D printing technology and [Atmel based] Arduino electronics.
9. Back in 2013, our neighbors at Qualcomm introduced the world’s first-ever Wi-Fi connected coffee machine, which not only was controlled using a tablet but alerted users when their brew was ready.
10. Paulig Muki is using e-ink to put your mug on your coffee mug. The smart cup shows a new image — which can be uploaded via mobil app — each time you fill it with a hot liquid.
And of course, what would a morning be without your traditional, personal coffee maker? From a number of popular home brewers to other smart devices in and around the house, Atmel AVR and Atmel | SMART microcontrollers are powering them all with a variety of low-end, mid-range and high-end solutions.
So without further ado, we wish each and every one of you a happy National Coffee Day! After all, there is an ‘EE’ in coffee for a reason!
Atmel | Bits & Pieces 