[Dmitry Narkevich] likes a strong cup of tea and his method of getting there is to oscillate the tea bag as it steeps. But why take the time to do this when you can make an Arduino brew your tea for you. As you can see, he rigged up a system to move the tea bag as it steeps in his metal bottle.
The motion is provided by a hobby servo connected to an Arduino. This makes timing the process very simple and we’d imaging it’s only a matter of time before he adds an alarm so he’ll know when it’s ready. But the real hack comes in the apparatus that connects the servo to the bottle. Since he’ll be drinking out of it the assembly needs to be easy to remove and should be able to stand up to the abuse of being clamped on and taken off a few times each day.
The base of the device is a guitar capo. This is meant to gently clamp to the finger board of a guitar using spring tension so it is already covered in rubber which gives it a firm grip on the bottle’s opening. The servo is connected to a metal part from a stapler, and the string drapes over the body of a disposable pen. Don’t miss this in action in the clip after the break.
If you don’t have a servo on hand you could try using the sled from an optical drive.
