Ok, I am completely new to ARDUINO and micro-controllers in general. What I am trying to do is build a drink mixer/dispenser to be built into my counter. I want to program it so that it would have multiple "programs", but each program would actually be a different drink. For "drink 1" it would run motor/pump 1 for 3 seconds, then motor/pump 3 for 1.5 seconds... ect. until the proper amount of each liquid is dispensed. There would be a 12 key keypad to put in what drink you want made. (001# would make drink 1, 002# would make drink 2, and so on with # being enter telling the program to start. There would also be a small LCD display to confirm what numbers you entered. I would want it to store a large directory of drinks.
Now my questions is, is this possible? and if so, how can I go about doing it?
It is entirely possible. You will probably need a small transistor and resistor to drive each pump. If you use a serial LCD it will only use up two pins. If you are decoding a 3x4 keyboard that will take 7 more pins. That will leave you with about 10 pins left over for controlling pumps. If you want to display a description of the drink being made on the LCD you might need some external storage like an SD card.
Now, I was planning on using DC motors to run the pumps, but now I am looking into using stepper motors so that I have more control.
I have a few questions.
What would be a good stepper motor/driver combo for this? Something affordable? (im pushing liquid straight up about 5-6 feet in a tube just smaller than 1/4 inch)
What ARDUINO board would be best? I plan on starting with 4 or 5 pumps but want to expand later.
Can someone show me a sample code for something like this? Just something that makes it so that if "001# is entered it will run the appropriate stepper for the correct amount of steps.
Any help on any of this would be amazing... Like I said, I am completely new to all of this but this is a project I really wanna do right now (I'm remodeling my kitchen and am building it into the counter)
What kinds of drinks are you planning on mixing? Given the number of combinations, I imagine it'll be alcoholic drinks. I ask, as you might want to ensure that you use alcohol-resistant tubing (not that that will be difficult to find), and peristaltic pumps (it is a food product, after all). Also, while there is only small concern with alcohol-containing liquids, if you plan on including mixers (fruit juice, etc), then sanitation of the tubes becomes a concern, as well as potential spoilage of the fluid in the tube.
You might want to encode a cleaning/flushing routine in the software to assist with these issues.