A Fully Automatic British Breakfast: Ready While You Sleep

March 17, 2024 by Maya Posch 35 Comments

What do you mean, the temporary breadboard setup went into production? (Credit: Gregulations, YouTube) — What do you mean, the temporary breadboard setup went into production? (Credit: [Gregulations], YouTube)

Among all the amazing technologies that were promised to us, there is one that is much more egregious than the lack of flying cars and real hovering hoverboards: the lack of fully automated breakfast-maker machines. Instead we find ourselves handling the same dumb appliances each morning as we make a healthy breakfast that we then have time to wolf down before rushing out of the door to still be a few minutes late for work. When [Greg] researched machines that could automatically prepare breakfast, he came up empty, which led him down the rabbit hole of the Autochef-9000.

Although often featured in movies – ranging from Back to the Future to Wallace and Gromit – the contraptions in those are rarely practical, and real-life attempts often suffer the problem of feature creep as they have to handle too many ingredients and operations. This is where [Greg] found redemption in the simplicity of a proper British breakfast: beans, toast, sausages (sossys), and eggs. Months of CAD, welding, breadboarding, and writing Arduino code later, he made a machine that can open a can of beans, toast bread, boil eggs, fry up sausages, and deposit it all on a plate, all ready for that morning breakfast first thing when you stroll into the kitchen.

Thanks to [htky] for the tip.

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Breakfast Bot Does Eggs To Perfection

January 16, 2019 by Lewin Day 13 Comments

Breakfast is a meal fraught with paradoxes. It’s important to start the day with a hearty meal full of energy and nutrition, but it’s also difficult to cook when you’re still bleary-eyed and half asleep. As with many problems in life, automation is the answer. [James Bruton] has the rig that will boil your egg and get your day off to a good start.

The basic apparatus uses a thermostatically controlled hotplate to heat a pot of water. [James] then employs an encoder-controlled linear actuator from a previous project to raise and lower a mesh colander into the pot, carrying the egg. An Arduino is used to measure the water temperature, only beginning the cooking process once the temperature is over 90 degrees Celsius. At this point, a 6-minute timer starts, with the egg being removed from the water and dumped out by a servo-controlled twist mechanism.

Future work will include servo control of the hotplate’s knob and building a chute to catch the egg to further reduce the need for human intervention. While there’s some danger in having an automated hotplate on in the house, this could be synchronized with an RTC to ensure your boiled egg is ready on time, every day.

Breakfast machines are a grand tradition around these parts, and we’ve seen a few in our time. Video after the break.

[Thanks to Baldpower for the tip!]

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