Bake Mate - Pi Chef Blog #14 - Wrapping up
I had planned on capturing a video of me using Bake Mate, but this turned out to be a lot more difficult than I expected.
I don't have access to a camera tripod, so I needed to hold my phone in one hand in order to capture video. One problem was that the autofocus exposes the scene based on the brightness of the surroundings, which makes whatever is on the Pi HAT's display unreadable. I tried manually setting the exposure, but that didn't seem to work.
With a little help, I managed to salvage the following video. It's very similar to what I've already demonstrated: Bake Mate parses the json file and if it detects an ingredient that has been measured in volume (cups), and it knows the density of that ingredient (I've added the density of common ingredients - flour in this case), it will automatically convert the volume into a weight.
So, instead of measuring flour in a measuring cup and then adding it to the mixing bowl, all the user needs to do is keep pouring it until the bar (and the matrix) fills!
The recipe called for 1 3/4 cups of flour - which was automatically converted 230 grams. And the rest is similar to the previous videos I've posted: keep adding till the bar & matrix fill up - except it was with a real ingredient like flour instead of screwdrivers.
I planned on trying out the NFC board that was provided in the challengers kit, and covering the build process of my new weighing scale - one that is big and stable enough that the user can continue mixing on the scale itself, but something popped up and I need to travel out of state this weekend. I don't think I'll make it back before the deadline for the competition, so this will remain incomplete but NFC was a stretch goal to begin with. I won't finish the 'fancy & stable' weighing scale in time either, but for the purpose of demonstrating how Bake Mate works, the existing scale works just fine.
I completed everything I promised that Bake Mate would have. Bake Mate was also well centered around the Pi Chef theme - it is something that couldn't be built using an Arduino, and makes good use of what the Pi has to offer.
If I had to use an Arduino Uno (or a slightly faster ARM board), I would have managed to offer only a small fraction of what the RPi3 based Bake Mate has to offer: the weighing scale, the LED matrix, a very basic graphical display would have been possible, but as the features start to add up, the Raspberry Pi 3 simply made more sense! Using the Raspberry Pi 3 allows the project to scale a lot further and makes it easier to add features too. I recently came across a browser extension that parses recipe webpages and displays the actual recipe in a clean & formatted manner. If I could somehow integrate this with Bake Mate it would be as simple as clicking 'Send to Bake Mate', and going to the kitchen to get started.
A quick recap of what Bake Mate has to offer:
- It displays recipes in steps - it saves the user the trouble of referring to a cookbook or a phone.
- Easy recipe scaling: Bake Mate does the math for you if you want to bake 1.5x, 2x or 3.145x the quantity of a recipe.
- Automatic unit conversion between same types of quantities (weight to weight eg oz to gm) and different types (volume to mass eg cups to grams). Users won't need to worry about converting between units and measuring volumes in measuring cups, which bring me to:
- 'Pour to fill the bar': Bake Mate parses the value of the ingredient, converts it to a weight and subtracts the weight of the mixing bowl and the ingredients that have already been added. All the user needs to do is keep adding ingredients until the progress bar/LED matrix fills up. Commonly used ingredients like water, oil and milk are often measured in cups, but Bake Mate calculates the weight using the density. Instead of measuring out 3 cups of milk and then adding it to the mix, simply keep pouring till Bake Mate tells you to stop!
- Oven temperature monitoring & timers: Bake Mate converts temperatures between units (C, F & Gas Mark), and alerts the user via a mobile notification if the temperature of the oven deviates too far from the value required by the recipe. It also sends periodic updates, and a final notification when the baking time has elapsed. Have you ever made a mistake with unit conversion or left something in the oven for too long? Bake Mate comes to the rescue!
- I managed to complete one stretch goal: using the LED matrix of the Sense HAT to serve as an indicator: the LED matrix gradually fills up as the ingredient is added, and finally flashes green when the required amount is reached.
Bake Mate is certainly one of the most fun projects I've worked on - it required working on both hardware and software (the largest Python application I've developed by far!), and was a great and fun learning experience!
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