Who wants warm drinks? Well, coffee drinkers, we guess. Other than them, who wants warm drinks? Tea drinkers, sure. How about room temperature drinks? No one, that’s who. It’s silly to buy a refrigerator to cool down a single drink, so what option are you left with? Ice cubes? They’ll dilute your drink. Ice packs and a cooler? Sure, they’ll keep your drinks cold, but they’re hardly cool are they? No, if you want a cold drink the cool way, you build a thermoelectric cooler. And if you want to build one, you’re in luck, because [John Park] has a tutorial to do just that up on AdaFruit.
The parts list includes an AdaFruit Trinket M0, a more powerful version of AdaFruit’s Trinket line. The Trinket is used to control the main part in this build, a Peltier thermoelectric cooler, as well as the temperature display and switches. The other part controlled by the microcontroller is a peristaltic pump, which is used to do the dispensing of the liquid. The code to control everything is written in Python as the Trinket M0 comes with AdaFruit’s CircuitPython by default. Also included in the tutorial are the files for the stand, should you want to 3D print it or cut it with a CNC or laser cutter.
After the break, you can watch as [John] goes over the project and builds it, or go to the AdaFruit website and follow the instructions to build your own. As [John] says, there might be better ways to chill your drinks, but this is “definitely one of the more science-y and interesting ones.” For more projects using the Peltier Effect, try this one that uses the effect in sous-vide cooking, or this one, a Peltier cooled micro-fridge!
There are “frozen” whiskey stones or stainless steel cubes which don’t dilute drinks, but I admit Peltier’s have geek sheek.
maybe you could keep one of those in a little freezer compartment, and just extend it into the drink with a servo when it needs cooling instead of using a pump. You could probably even get the servo from the peristaltic pump, if you were pressed…
A container with salt water kept in the freezer will chill a soda or a barley-pop in about 5m. That’s my hack during the summer time :)
What is a barley-pop?
Beer. It’s made from barley, among other grains :)
Hm very similar to the project from RCLife…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvtm7dFGl_4
Not the most elegant solution as when you change drinks you must clean out the pump and make sure there is no residue left over in it. As mentioned above, a saltwater bath for sealed drinks is a much better solution but im sure there is a better way to play with thermodynamics that doesn’t require the clean up afterwards.