From honey green milk tea to earl grey milk tea, bubble tea is found in many variations with a multitude of toppings. Our first course of action to make a bubble tea machine was to narrow down the type of teas that we wanted to provide. We decided on four main flavours: black tea, green tea, green milk tea, and original milk tea.
However, while we decided on these variables surrounding our machine, we had not yet handled the circuitry involved. Firstly we decided on our microcontroller to be Arduino, selecting an Arduino Mega board with a RAMPS 1.4 shield. We then tried to program the Arduino to work with water pumps.
We also needed to decide on the type of motors we wanted to use for our rotating circular track, choosing between a stepper motor or a servo motor. We decided to use a stepper motor for the track and to control the liquid pumps. Then, we coded a program on Arduino IDE such that the microcontroller is able to make the stepper motor rotate.
Our plan was to create an interface with physical buttons. Each button would indicate a choice of tea, and of sugar or stevia level. Pressing each button will dispense each liquid for a specified amount of time until the total drink amount is reached. The buttons and microcontroller were connected to an LED display which would display the drink options chosen and the message, “Thank you. Enjoy your drink!” once the drink is fully dispensed.
We successfully coded a program that would dispense a drink for a specified time (initially 2 seconds) when the button is pressed. This then expanded, with the program being able to be used to control the actions of two different dispensers connected to two different buttons in a time based manner. This was a significant achievement in the progress of our project to create a successful bubble tea machine.