Britain is famously known as a land of manners and hospitality. Few situations could make an Englishman’s stiff upper lip quiver, short of running out of tea bags while entertaining house guests. Thankfully, [The Gentleman Maker] is here and living up to his name – with a helpful tea monitor to ensure you’re never caught out again.
The Intelli-T, as it has been dubbed, monitors tea inventory by weight. An Arduino Uno combined with a HX711 IC monitors a load cell mounted under a canister, with a reed switch on the lid. Upon the canister being open and closed, the Arduino takes a measurement, determining whether tea stocks have dipped below critical levels. If the situation is dire, a Raspberry Pi connected over the serial port will sound an urgent warning to the occupants of the home. If there is adequate tea, the Raspberry Pi will instead provide a helpful tea fact to further educate the users about the hallowed beverage.
It’s a fun project, and one that has scope for further features, given the power of the Raspberry Pi. A little more work could arrange automatic ordering of more tea online, or send alerts through a service like IFTTT. We’ve seen [The Gentleman Maker]’s uniquely British hacks before, such as the umbrella that tells you the weather. Video after the break.
No self respecting Brit would allow tea (bag) levels to get anywhere near that low.
No self respecting tea drinker would use tea bags for anything except emergency backup.
Civilised people use tea bricks for shtf situations ;)
Hmm. The somewhat basic flow is that real Englishmen use loose tea, not teabags. :)
But will it make spoons? https://stuffilikenet.wordpress.com/?s=spoons&searchbutton=go%21
RPi, check, Arduino, check … wait, it doesn’t order more tea? What is this, 2015??
One esp8266 could have accomplished this for a lot cheaper lol. But it wouldn’t be 2019 if we didn’t use a whole quad core computer to blink leds.
“Britain is famously known as a land of manners and hospitality.”
Dry wit.
I don’t think Britain is famously known as a land of manners and hospitality for anyone living in Europe. It is known for it’s great cuisine and dentistry however.
How does he monitor the milk and sugar levels?
That’s something one just doesn’t talk about in public…
Could have just hooked up a voltmeter and op-amp to the sensor.
Add a speaker with a range of reports on a scale? Looks like you can turn this into a scale if you add a display. Would be a humorous scale having reports. Neat build.