Tea Timer using ATTiny2313 microcontroller

Tea Timer

I usually drink a lot of tea, and sometimes the tea tastes a lot better than average, which means that most times I make tea I fail at least partially.

Tea Timer

The taste of the tea depends on a lot of variables:
  • The make of the tea. I buy my tea at Simon Levelt and they have approximately 200 different tastes of tea.
  • Temperature of the water.
  • Amount of tea in relation to the amount of water.
  • The way the water is poured over the tea or the tea is put in the water.
  • The time the tea is in the water.
  • If the water is stirred while the tea is in the water.
  • Whether the bitter tea dripping from the tea container is allowed to mix with the rest of the tea.

I always have the problem that if I make my tea I forget to take the tea out of the water at the right time because I’m always distracted by a multitude of things after putting the tea in the water. To take care of this I had a simple to make but effective idea. Above the kitchen sink under the cupboards I mount a little motor with a little winch which takes the tea out of the water after a pre programmed time.

Because the winch is not directly above the teapot the bitter tea dripping from the container is allowed to drain harmlessly into the kitchen sink. This will give me a fair amout of control over the hardest to grasp variable when making tea.

Easy Breadboarding. Schematic

When I’m fiddling about with electronics I want to be comfortable about it. Therefore I built some things to make by breadboarding life a little simpler. One example is the Network Breadboard Interface. Another one is this little project. These little pcb’s can be put directly into a breadboard and they have the same pinout as the AVR it is designed for. Each of these circuits also has a 74HC4053 and a programming connector on them. The 74HC4053 is from an application note from atmel and it switches the programming pins ( MOSIMISO, and SCK between the connector on the bottom and the programming connector on the top. The 74HC4053 is switched by the level on the reset pin. I also added a reset button for the microcontroller. I build 3 of these interfaces but the one for the ATMEGA 16 and consorts is not shown on the picture. Also note the small labels for the pin names I glued on to the pcb’s.

Read more: Tea Timer using ATTiny2313 microcontroller

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