There are those who reckon the humble bowl of breakfast cereal to be the height of culinary achievement. Look askance if you must, but cereal junkies are a thing, and they have a point. The magic comes not from just filling a bowl and adding a splash of milk, but by knowing which cereals to mix together.
Who needs all that fussy mixing, though, when you can automate and customize your cereal dispensing chores? That’s the approach [Kevin Obermann] and [Adrian Bernhart] took with their Cereal Dispensing Machine, even if they went a little further than necessary. Laser-cut plywood forms a four-station carousel for off-the-shelf dry-good dispensers, each of which got a stepper motor to replace the wrist-twisting. The original motors were a bit too wimpy to handle the more rugged morning selections and were eventually upgraded to gear motors. The platform that supports the dispensers also holds all the electronics, including an ESP32 to run everything and host the web app needed to choose your poison. Plus RGB LEDs, because breakfast should look like a rave. Sadly, the team ran out of GPIO pins and were unable to run the peristaltic pump needed to add the milk. There will always be version 2.0, though.
If cereal isn’t your automated breakfast of choice, we understand. Perhaps a more [Wallace] and [Gromit] style breakfast machine would do, or a robotic peanut butter sandwich any time of day is a treat.
This is why I come to this site…
Expand this to different kinds of milk.
Not necessary, just take only the one from the right, blue-white package as it is fresh whole milk, perhaps lactose free. The other of the two packages contains UHT milk (“H-Vollmilch”) – just don’t buy it, it tastes gross.
You really only need a container of Skim Milk and a smaller container of cream, then just vary the amounts to create 1%, 2%, or Full cream.
Unless you meant milk from different animals…. [insert Meet the Parents meme here.]
I would have tried to do this with less spinning, and with only two motors for the cereal disbursement, downside would be that it’d only make one bowl at a time. It’d be neat to put a strain gauge under the cereal hopper so that the system could disgorge in precise weights of food, and also warn you (maybe add to your shopping list) when running low.
Blend your own Trail Mix!
Internet of Cereals…
Dispenser for milk will be a sanitary hazard.
A glorious exercise in engineering overkill.
I think I would have made the bottom (bowl) tray spin, and kept the top stationary, to avoid excessive wire movement.
I could also replace the bottom tray with a conveyor belt as my family grew… :)
Just leave out the bottom tray and let your teenage son lie there and keep dumping it into his mouth!
Around the time he reaches 22, you may notice a slight decrease in your grocery bills, (if he moves out of your house).