Natsuki Sacks

Hi! I'm Suki, a sophomore at Olin majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering. I handled the software and embedded systems components and project management for this project.

Aaron Codrington

Hello, I'm Aaron. I'm a sophomore at Olin working towards an engineering with a concentration in biotech major. I focused on creating the electrical system, and the mechanical integration of our peristaltic pumps.

Brooklyn Wakefield

Hi! I'm Brooklyn a sophomore at Olin Majoring in Engineering with a Concentration in Product Design. For our project I work on the mechanical components.

Omar Abdellah

Hi! I'm Omar, a Babson student who is pursuing an ECE certificate at Olin. I worked on some of the software and electrical components in this project.

The Soda Fountain

Why pour yourself a drink when you can have a robot bartender do it for you?

The Soda Fountain is a machine designed to make pouring easier. It works in a very simple way. You place your cup into the machine, pick from a list of pre-selected drinks or your own mix, and watch as it makes the perfect pour every single time.

Our Journey (Process)

A look at the Soda Fountain's path from idea to functioning machine.

Sprint Review 1

Prior to the first Sprint Review, it's safe to say we were a little optimistic. At this point, our Demo Day MVP was an LCD-controlled fluid dispenser system with at least 4 different customizable or preset drink options, utilizing a conveyer belt system. We even had stretch goals of 6 different drinks and automatic cup reloading. We quickly realized that this was a little far-fetched and rescoped our project. For this sprint, we built a makeshift proof-of-concept prototype showing that we could restrict the movement of water using a servo motor. It also served as proof that we needed to use solenoid valves.

Sprint Review 2

For this Sprint Review, we had revised, more realistic goals. We made the conveyer belt mechanism part of our stretch goal as we thought it would be cool to have but not necessary to the functionality of the fountain. At this point we had an assembled frame, leak proof spouts (something that was an issue for us before), as well as connected and functioning peristaltic pumps. At this point, the mechanisms of the Soda Fountain worked, we just had to automate it to work via commands on the LCD touch screen.

Sprint Review 3

For this sprint, we finalized our GUI, built using Python's Tkinter library, and mounted two out of four of our peristaltic pumps. We re-added the goal of allowing for customization and accounted for that in the GUI. Following this, we only had to worry about mounting the last two pumps and integrating the code, which wouldn't be a problem as it was tested with the two pumps previously.