Best (and simplest) Approach To Measuring Weight of A Coffee Carafe

Projects General Guidance
1

I've never programmed an Arduino, or have any experience in this space - so bear with me in regards to potentially how easy this could be.

We use a Coffee Carafe in our office, and it would be nice to chart/graph the amount of coffee left based on weight. Just wondering if this can be done, and what the best approach would be.

Would be nice to be on our network, so we can pull in SNMP for Zabbix reporting then pair that with thresholds/alerts (75% of coffee left, 50% coffee left). We would also need to figure out how to reset the level, when coffee is made or added.

2

You need to do some work ...

Look at hx711 and loade cells to weigh things

3

First, figure out how you are going to weigh the coffee, possibly a load cell or other sensor. Get that working. Then think about how you would want it to be on the network. You can add an ethernet shield to an arduino for hardwire or go wireless. If you go wireless, many of the boards have wireless built in so I'd recommend using one of those (ESP2866 family)

Google "Arduino xxxx" where xxxx is whatever part of your project you are interested in and you will get tons of information and videos. There may even be some of a coffee pot weigher (????)

4

blh64:
Google "Arduino xxxx" where xxxx is whatever part of your project you are interested in

Ooooohhhhhh, so that's how Google works. Who knew...

5

TryingSomethingCool:
Would be nice to be on our network

You can use the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol RFC2324....

6

If you're a programmer, the code is pretty easy. However, when it comes to networking, I find that the Raspberry Pi is a far easier choice than Arduino. I've used the DF Robot weigh sensor kit (basically an HX711 load cell interface and a load cell) with a pi to weigh fluids that are dispensed by a pump.

You'll have to do some mechanical assembly obviously, but there are libraries for reading the HX711 with the pi and I'm sure you can find tons of SNMP software for Linux.

7

cedarlakeinstruments:
If you're a programmer, the code is pretty easy. However, when it comes to networking, I find that the Raspberry Pi is a far easier choice than Arduino. I've used the DF Robot weigh sensor kit (basically an HX711 load cell interface and a load cell) with a pi to weigh fluids that are dispensed by a pump.

You'll have to do some mechanical assembly obviously, but there are libraries for reading the HX711 with the pi and I'm sure you can find tons of SNMP software for Linux.

Thank you for an actual helpful response, much appreciated. I'll look further into the kit you mentioned above, and see what I can find out.

8

Didn't quite come across did it elvon........

9

Load cell sounds a good way to go, but the kind of coffee machine I'm envisaging has a heating element under the pot, which also gets coffee spilled on it, which seems like a somewhat hostile environment.

You might be able to put the cell under the machine itself, but I suspect that you'll struggle to distinguish by weight the difference between "no coffee but water has just been added to make a new pot" and "pot is full".

What does your carafe look like?

10

tasmod:
Didn't quite come across did it elvon........

Stony ground.

Och weel.... I'll repost that link a month today.

11

With load cells I need to remove the weigh mass and place it back on the cell sometimes.

12

elvon_blunden:
Ooooohhhhhh, so that's how Google works. Who knew...

The only valid reason for not searching on a topic to be able to at least ask good questions is if you don't know that searching is a thing.

So help with Google has 2 modes:

  1. receiver doesn't know about search: it actually is helpful advice if used, may change a life

  2. receiver just doesn't want to bother picking through search hits: it can be treated as insulting to lever more help effort.