help needed! proof of concept: drink heater/ cooler

Hi guys. I’m a student entrepreneurship. I have an idea I need to work out, but I’m not sure how to build this.

My idea is this: I really dislike cold coffee, when I need to go somewhere and go back to my workspace my coffee is cold. I thought up a small tablet type device which can read, show the temperature of any beverages and heat/ cool it if needed. You want your cold drinks stay cold and your hot drinks stay hot. Makes sense right :grin:

The tablet device is build out of several sensors and heating/ cooling sources, through the LCD screen it can show the temperature and enter your desired temperature for your drink. Now it may sound really futuristic and maybe not doable in real life. I only need to simulate my idea, a proof of concept, I don’t need to build this in full hardware. No worries about power supplies, any hazards or other stuff
I have made a simple sketch of my idea, hopefully it clears up my idea.

My reason to post this on a Arduino forum is because Arduino can make use of a temperature sensor. When the sensor comes in touch with something cold, burn LED A and when it got in touch with something hot burn LED B. Through controls the LED can burn brighter or darker.
This is what I think is possible with Arduino. But I have no clue how to make this. I do have some programming skills in other languages like HTML, PHP and JS.

Anyone who can help me? And if anyone have any criticisms or suggestions to make my idea better, please don't hesitate to tell me.

If there are grammar/ spelling mistakes in this post, I really apologize. English is not my mother language.

Anyone who can help me?

It seems like it may be possible, but what would you use to cool off the drink? I know that you could wire a heating element to the drink, but what if it's too hot? Could the entire device be like a box? Combination of microwave and refrigerator/freezer?

Perhaps you could use a peltier heater / cooler wrapped around your beverage container?

Hi thanks for your reply and suggestions.

I don't have to build it in real life, just a proof of concept. The assignment was basically to come with a concept that would be possible in the future.

logic should be your guide.

the device has 3 choices. you want a warm beverage, a cold one, or room temperature.

what is the base of the logic that the device will use ? how does it know ? motion sensing ? time of day ? time since filled ?

the amount of energy needed to heat or cool one beverage is massive. not easily battery powered. put a cup on the stove or microwave and see how long it takes. assuming future power sources will be much smaller, it could be done.

does it keep it hot forever ? say you walk into the next room and come back, fine, but what if you walk into the next room, go to the store or work and come back ?

the time to re-heat will not be short, the energy cost of keeping hot will be high.
a hot drink will evaporate and after time will change.

Hi, I agree with Peter a Peltier device will do what you need and cover a comact surface.
You will need a heat sink on the side of the device away from your cup, and it will need a fan to circulate air through it.
But it is ideal to heat or cool hat you want.

Tom...... :slight_smile:

To dave-in-nj: I don't think there should be any logic in something that could be possible in the future, unless you have been there before. You can only assume it could or couldn't be possible.

To all your questions maybe, you are already trying to fly now. I'm still trying to crawl. By proving I can light up a LED by a reading off a temperature, would be the first step. To lighten/ darken the LED would be another huge thing for me. I'm now not trying to create a billion dollar/pound/euro idea, maybe it is or isn't, who knows. Right now I don't really care about that, I want to prove my concept works a.k.a. proof of concept.

To TomGeorge: Yeah I'm aware of the Peltier but is it innovative? It already exists. Again I'm not really trying to heat or cool actual stuff but to simulate it can work.

bar_buff:
is it innovative? It already exists. Again I'm not really trying to heat or cool actual stuff but to simulate it can work.

Now I've no idea what you're asking for. The idea of a heater+cooler was your idea - that's what we've been asked to propose innovative solutions for. A Peltier is relatively obscure and not at all obvious for this application. If that's not innovative enough then what aspect of the project is it that you want to demonstrate and what are your criteria for it being innovative? You could implement a temp sensor and micro LCD temperature readout with a mock 'heating' and 'cooling' display if you want - is that the sort of thing you're after?

Alright, I think I get what you're looking for... Check this out.

Using this TMP36, you could read the temperature and do things with that information.

// Source: https://learn.adafruit.com/tmp36-temperature-sensor/using-a-temp-sensor

int sensorPin = 0; // the analog pin the TMP36 is connected to
int redPin = 2;
int bluPin = 4;
int grePin = 5;

void setup(){}

void loop(){
  int reading = analogRead(sensorPin);
  
  // Convert the reading to voltage, use the voltage that is going to the TMP36
  float voltage = reading * 3.3;  // or 5.0
  voltage /= 1024.0;
  
  float temperatureC = (voltage - 0.5) * 100  //temperature in Celcius
  
  if (temperatureC >= 70){
    digitalWrite(bluPin, LOW);  // turn off the blue LED
    digitalWrite(grePin, LOW);  // Turn off the Green LED
    digitalWrite(redPin, HIGH); // Turn on the Red LED
  }
  
  else if ( 70 > temperatureC >= 25){
    digitalWrite(bluPin, LOW);  // turn off the blue LED
    digitalWrite(grePin, HIGH);  // Turn on the Green LED
    digitalWrite(redPin, LOW); // Turn off the Red LED
  }
  
  else if ( temperatureC < 25) {
    digitalWrite(bluPin, HIGH);  // turn on the blue LED
    digitalWrite(grePin, LOW);  // Turn off the Green LED
    digitalWrite(redPin, LOW); // Turn off the Red LED
  }
}

What this would do is read the voltage from a TMP36 connected to Analog pin 0 and convert the voltage to a temperature. Then based on that information it will trigger an LED. If it's less than 25C it'll trigger a blue LED, indicating that it's cold. If it's higher than 25 but less than 70C, it'll trigger green, meaning lukewarm to the lower end of hot, higher than 70C triggers the red LED, indicating hot.

Is this something like what you were looking for?

To PeterH: Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all the posted replies. The thing about the Peltier, someone already made a beer cooling system but it's way too bulky and inconvenient. In fact I am trying to mock up this heating/ cooling idea. Maybe I haven't explained it right, if that's the case I apologize for that.

To officialxian: That's just awesome. It really helps, thank you. Can I also hook up the temperature readings to a LCD screen?

bar_buff:
To officialxian: That's just awesome. It really helps, thank you. Can I also hook up the temperature readings to a LCD screen?

I don't see why not. Same basic principle as if you wanted to write the temperature to the serial monitor. I don't know what you'd use for an LCD screen, but here's some code for writing the temperature to the Serial monitor every 10 seconds...

void updateTemp(){
  Serial.print("Current Temperature: ");
  Serial.println(temperatureC);  // prints the temperature
  delay(10000);  // wait 10 seconds
}

// just call updateTemp() inside of loop.

The only problem with this is that it would cause the checking of the temperature to only happen once every 10 seconds as well. This is because "delay(xx)" halts all activity by the board for xx milliseconds. Another possibility is to check the temperature once every x runs of loop. Here would be an example of that.

// Place this before anything else

int runs = 0

// Place this inside loop

if (runs == 100){  // if loop has been run 100 times...
  updateTemp();  // call void updateTemp()
}

void updateTemp(){
  Serial.print("Current Temperature: ");
  Serial.println(temperatureC);  // prints the temperature
  runs = 0;  // resets the run counter
}

Glad to be of help! :slight_smile: BTW, if you're going to be designing your own products, I'd look into learning more about Arduino. It can be useful is almost endless ways. :slight_smile:

oh, I get it....

you are looking for a quantum flux vortex generator. spinning in a dihedral fashion it is exothermic and suspended in a tetrahedral state it is endothermic.

hot one way cold the other, right ?