The Brita Project

While working on the laser cut version of this Invention and adding new features to the code.

We decided that one of the discussions in the comments was interesting enough for us to do a little detour and test it out. 

The discussion was about the possibility of placing the device inside the fridge. 

Some pointed out that the main obstacles might be the fridge blocking the WiFi signal. 

Will the fridge block the WiFi signals to the wemos? 

Can we use the fridge as a Faraday cage?

You can find the answer to this question in the video.

In our last group meeting we made some great progress. 

 The first thing we did is to add NTP to our system. The main reason is to be able to track and notify on things based on time. 

We added output on the web interface for the time. We still need to work out the Day light saving issue – but we decided will add a way to handle it via the web interface. 

 The next thing we tackled was getting some data out of the system, so we can get stat. We setup a channel on ThingSpeak and experimented for a while on getting the data there, and setting up nice widget that we placed in the wen interface. 

 Once that was sorted out, we added a post to the ThingSpeak each time a refill is done. So we measure the weight on the start of the fill and we know what is the weight on the end and its 1 to 1 from grams to milliliters – and this value is posted. 

 We then went on doing a full run and you can see in the video we noticed 2 issues. the update of the display on the web interface is not refreshing fast enough to show the data from the ThingSpeak in real life – but I think we can live with that, but the other issue is more urgent. 

 Once we place a full pitcher on the scale for the first few seconds it consider it not full and try to refill it. 

 We did notice that the reading from the HX711 are not that stable – but it was in grams and we did not care all that much. But now – we do – so I think will add some low pass filter and maybe adjust the top threshold for cutting the power to the pump comparing to what we consider as full pitcher (a 2% diff will solve the problem). 

 So stay tune, more to come soon.

We added the water pipe, pump and improvised reservoir.

We use an AC submerged water pump, the kind is used in aquariums , that is switched  by a relay.

We added start and stop for the pump in the code and did a dry run to make sure all is working well.

Next we filled the reservoir, crossed our fingers and it worked like a charm ... 

Watch the video