Anna V. Quiros
SmartKettle
Our SmartKettle used a website to allow a teamaker to boil water, steep tea, and keep finished tea warm.
HOW IT WORKS
What kinds of tea can you make?
Our SmartKettle has presets for white, green, black, oolong, maté, pu-erh, rooibos, and fruit / herbal tea. There is also an option to input a custom temperature and steep time.
Analysis of Design
Is the website easy to use?
Yes! The website is user-friendly and it accounts for entry errors (providing reasonable limits on temperature and time). The cancel button is versatile, allowing the user to both shut off the heat and raise the steeper at any point in the tea-making process, which can be very useful if the user makes a mistake with their order.
What is the quality of the physical build?
The actual physical structure is sturdy and simple, and the temperature and steeping components do their jobs well; the hot plate heats up the water quickly, the temperature readings of the thermocouple are accurate, and the motor lowers the steeper to the exact height necessary, even for small amounts of water.
What was the most difficult part of the process?
The most difficult part was writing the code—specifically figuring out how to send messages back and forth between the server, the ESP32, and the SmartPlug. Also, our ESP32 kept timing out and crashing, which slowed down our process a lot. We aren’t quite sure why this happened, since there didn't seem to be a pattern to the errors.
How could the design be improved?
To improve our design, we would add a timer to allow tea-making at a certain time of day, explore better methods of heating water (a hotplate is not efficient), and upgrade the look of both our website and physical structure. We could also find the temperature at which we should turn off the hotplate so that the water just reaches the desired temperature for the tea, and goes no higher.