I hope I am posting this to the right section: I am brand new to the forum. As the title states, I am looking to design a setup to automate my pour over coffee, and I figured Arduino would be the way to go. A little bit of background: I am a complete novice when it comes to programming, having little to no relevant experience. I have dabbled a bit with website design and have done a bit of very basic python, but nothing that would truly amount to skill.
That being said, I am sufficiently handy, working for 6 years as a Welding/Agriculture/Woodshop Instructor (I taught in a very small school, had to wear alot of hats, so to speak), and doing plenty of fabrication projects on my own time. I have dabbled plenty with repairing and building PCs, sound systems, and other basic electronics; I just haven't the faintest clue of where to begin with this particular project.
As for the project itself:
I need the automation to heat water to a precise temperature, then pump the water to a nozzle to wet the grounds. It's going to need to stop after the water reaches certain weight measurements.
So in essence i think I am going to need:
Heating element for the water
temperature sensor for the water
scale/heat plate combo
small water pump that can handle heated liquid
a head unit to dispense the water
probably a solenoid unit to control the water flow?
a controller
a display
In essence I am just looking to figure out how to source the hardware, and then i can figure out the rest. Thanks!
As might you have already. There are a crap ton of Arduino coffee maker projects. I would spend time read read reading through anything the proud designers say about their creations.
You will see the kinds of trouble you can get in, and many different pieces of the hardware you might want to use. Maybe even code you will begin to read and understand, and steal borrow later.
Before you buy anything at all, grab a virtual UNO board and start trying out the code examples on offer in the IDE to get a feel for programming of this kind.
The simulator I link is no harder to use than fiddling with real LEDs and push buttons and stuff, and has an added advantage that besides being free, you will postpone any issues that come up around the hardware - broken or marginal parts, dodgy wiring, power supply issues, trouble even uploading to a real board with that finicky USB port on your laptop and so forth.
I can often get 99.44 percent of a project's software settled before I move into the real world. Even if the simulator doesn't have a certain part, I can put something in there to act as a proxy - a pushbutton where IRL I intend to use a PIR sensor, for example.
Based on my experience, you're going about this the wrong way. First learn how to do at least basic programming: read inputs, control outputs. send debug information out the serial port and then start buying hardware.
Most beginners get stuck doing exactly what you're proposing.