AmIcook

A smart solution for student campus

What is it?

Student! Imagine that you come back to the campus dormitory and your roommates have already set water and pasta for the lunch. How stressful is it to wait for water to boil?
AmIcook is the solution!

Whenever you are hungry, you can organize easily a meal or join one. AmIcook will count how many partecipants will attend the meal, furthermore it will decide and dispense the optimal amount of ingredients needed for the pasta.
Then, it controls the stove and notifies the users when the meal is ready.

The main benefit for the users, beyond the optimization of time, it is the waste reduction, because the right amount of water, ingredients and energy is used to cook.

Consequently the shared dormitory kitchen results a more intelligent ambient.

Get a brief flyer!

Why is this an AmI?

Because AmIcook:

But wait there is more!

SUSTAINABILITY

Save food with your help, by always selecting the right amount of ingredients

Save energy by always cooking the pasta with the right time and with residual heat

RESPONSIVE

Remember the usual amount of pasta for each user

ADAPTIVE

Suggest early refill in order to satisfy an average meal

UBIQUITOUS

Accessible everywhere in the dormitory through the mobile app

GET TECHNICAL

Typical problems in a campus dormitory regards common spaces, like the kitchen.
The goal of the system is to guide the roommates of the shared kitchen into the organization of the meal, and to control the stages of the cooking in a sustainable way.
During a time window preceding the meal, the system collects, through a mobile application, the numbers of roommates attending. Then, the system computes the optimal amount of water and ingredients (pasta, salt) needed, and, based on these quantities, a dispenser releases the latters.
The system mainly manages the cooking phases (turn off/on the stove) and alerts the roommates when the meal is ready.

System Requirements

Functional Requirements Non-Functional Requirements

Intro

Functional Area	Description
1 - SENS	How it will sense
2 - ACT	How it will act
3 - THK	Various internal computations
4 - ALARM	The system notifies when to add or drain pasta
5 - POLL	Poll in order to organize the right number of users
6 - DEL	Delete your poll partecipation or directly your poll
7 - EMPTY	Prompt to refill the dispenser
8 - TIME	Keep a countdown to the end of cooking steps

Specifics

FR	SENS.1
Title:	Water boiling
Description:	A sensor will check if the water in the pot is boiling.
Priority:	1

FR	SENS.2
Title:	Pot presence
Description:	A sensor will check if a pot is on the stove in order to enable switching it on.
Priority:	2

FR	SENS.3
Title:	Dispenser emptiness
Description:	A sensor will check if the dispenser is running low on its ingredient.
Priority:	5

FR	ACT.1
Title:	Dispense pasta
Description:	A dispenser will drop in the pot the right amount of pasta.
Priority:	1

FR	ACT.2
Title:	Control the stove
Description:	Via smart-plug the system will switch on or off the stove.
Priority:	1

FR	ACT.3
Title:	Dispense other ingredients
Description:	Other dispenser will drop salt and water in the pot.
Priority:	5

FR	THK.1
Title:	Average amount of pasta for each roommate
Description:	The system will put as default this value. This will be eventually overwritten by the decision in POLL.2.
Priority:	3

FR	THK.2
Title:	Trigger early refills
Description:	The system will check the next meal ingredients and launch EMPTY.1 if needed.
Priority:	5

FR	THK.3
Title:	Scheduling
Description:	The system will keep a schedule to of the programmed meal and it will not allow two meal to be organised in the same moment (ex. not two lunches on the same day).
Priority:	2

FR	ALARM.1
Title:	Add water alarm
Description:	Notifies the User when it's time to add water in order to start the cooking process.
Priority:	1

FR	ALARM.2
Title:	Drain pasta alarm
Description:	Notifies the user when it's time to drain pasta
Priority:	1

FR	POLL.1
Title:	Create a poll
Description:	The User creates a poll with an expiration time
Priority:	1

FR	POLL.2
Title:	Join a poll
Description:	A Roommate joins an existing poll and decide the desired amount of pasta
Priority:	1

FR	DEL.1
Title:	Delete a poll
Description:	The poll User can delete it completly.
Priority:	4

FR	DEL.2
Title:	Delete a poll partecipation
Description:	A Roommate can delete his participation to a poll he joined.
Priority:	4

FR	EMPTY.1
Title:	Notification of empty dispenser
Description:	The latter User is called to refill to dispenser.
Priority:	5

FR	TIME.1
Title:	Countdown
Description:	Between every step the system will provide a countdown to its end
Priority:	5

Code	Area	Description
1	Portability	The microcontroller should be able to communicate with the mobile application through wi-fi
2	Portability	At least the app will be available for Android 5.0 or upper versions
3	Efficiency	Time will not be an issue with the micro controller but with the app/server, that will need to guarantee adequate response time
4	Usability	System language will be, at least, english
5	Usability	For now, the system will be optimized only for one kind of pasta
6	Interoperability	The microcontroller should be able to communicate with the electric stove and the dispenser (wired)

Terminology:

Session → Meal, either lunch or dinner
Poll → Survey that take places during a time window partecipation
Notification → Alarm sent to the user
Interface → Mobile application through which the poll is managed and the users
Dispenser → Physical container which releases pasta and salt
Hardware → Microcontroller + Dispenser + Sensors
System → Hardware + App

Actors:

User → Roommate who start the poll and oversees the cooking process
Roommate → Meal partecipants

ARCHITECTURE

Hardware

The Micro Controller will manage all the major hardware components as in picture.
The Dispenser will be place above the stove and it will be equipped with a electric motor in order to open and to close it (ACT.1 & ACT.3).
On the Dispenser there will be also: a humidity and temperature sensor placed right above the pot (SENS.1), an ultrasound sensor to detect the pot (SENS.2) and another one placed directly in it for check its emptiness (SENS.3).
The Smart Plug will switch on or off the electric Stove (ACT.2).
The Server will manage various computation and communications.
The Mobile Application will give the User and Roommates a way to interact with the system as well as an interface

Software

The Server will be Flask implemented and will be easily deployed on a single computer. It will elaborate all the data coming from the Micro Controller in order to perform THK.2, THK.3, ALARM.1, TIME, DEL and EMPTY.
The Mobile Application will be deployed on every Roommate Smartphone and it will be based on the Android 21 API. Beyond an interface (for ALARM, TIME, DEL and EMPTY), it will also enable poll creation/joining (POLL) and it will keep track of the average pasta amount for each Roommate (THK.1).

Network

The Micro Controller will be wired to the Dispenser and it will only exchange analogical information with the sensors.
The connection between the Micro Controller and the Smart Plug will be via router Z-Wave.
All the other connections will be based on Wi-Fi, so it will be necessary that Server, Smartphones and Micro Controller will belong to the same lan.

Name	Component
Micro Controller	Arduino Uno + Arduino Wi-Fi Shield + Adafruit Motor Shield v2.3
Humidity & Temperature Sensor	Sensor AM2302 (wired DHT22)
Ultrasound Sensor	Sensor HC-SR04
Smart Plug	Z-Wave Smart Plug
DC Motor	NEMA-17 Stepper Motor
Dispenser	1 lt. plastic dispenser
Electric Stove	Blinky electric stove diam.: 15.5 cm
Server	HP 15 Notebook PC
Name	Version/API
Python	3.6.0
Flask	0.12
Wi-Fi	IEEE 802.11
Z-Wave	ZC08-14110009
Android OS	21

~~Controlling electronically the electric stove, we have to switch on/off, eventually increase/decrease the heat~~
~~How to control an electric stove with a microcontroller?~~
~~How to detect if the pot is on the stove?~~
~~Which microcontroller?~~
~~Finding a smart-plug directly driven by Arduino-uno~~
~~Distinguish User from Roommate~~
~~Making a working server to app communication~~
Making the Wi-Fi shield work consistently and reliably