Spicy – CSE Senior Design

Team Name

Team Spicy

Timeline

Fall 2018 – Spring 2019

Students

Matthew Hilliard
Douglas Hoang
Jesus Serna
Nhan Vu
Irving Avila

Abstract

The Spicie Boi is designed to grind Spices, coffee, or other eatable products into a fine powered for uses in the culinary arts. Users will be able to feed any desired food product into the Spicie Boi and be able to either grind a specific amount or the product at any time and able to combine many different products to create a recipe.

Background

In today’s society, people have turned to cooking and the culinary arts to release stress, eat healthier, and save money. It is a well-known fact that the best meals are always made from scratch and prepared from the freshest ingredients. But not many people have the time to source freshly ground spices so they turn to pre-ground spices as an alternative to the messy and time-consuming task of grinding them by hand or in an automatic grinder. These grinders need to be cleaned after every use if you want to be able to change from one flavor to another without mixing them together. But once you have created the exact mixture that makes your food taste amazing theirs no way to recreate it every time unless you precisely measure every ingredient that was used before it is mixed together. This creates an inconsistency in the preparation of the food giving an inaccurate outcome to our culinary creations. Our product also aims to reduce the amount of mess and the amount of time needed to prepare freshly ground spices by using self-contained storage and grinding solution that only grinds the exact amount needed by the user. Using a separate grinder for each spice we can cut down on the number of times that cleaning the device is required. Users may only need to clean a grinder once they decided to change the spice in the storage chamber or once a cleaning cycle is recommended by the system. Many chefs also find themselves either making too little or too much of the spices they grind making more work or wasting fresh ingredients. The automatic grinder has an array of scales to be able to grind the first design is meant for home use but the design can be scaled for large kitchens in the food industry. This means that our product can be adapted to fit into any kitchen and reach a larger audience. By increasing the size of our storage housing we can hold large amounts of fresh spices but we can also add more grinders to the system to be able to provide a larger array of spices to choose from. We’ve realized that the automatic grinder is only part of the solution due to the lack of fresh spices available for consumers to buy locally. By creating a service to deliver spices sourced from around the world we can not only introduce fresh spices into the kitchen but also a means to replenish the consumer with more product. This means that this product will create a larger business for itself while also allowing the customer to source there own spices if they are available.

Project Requirements

The Spici Boi will be able to accurately weigh and grind spices
The Spici Boi will completely stop if the grinding mechanism is not in place.
The UI will be operated using solely touchscreen
The grinding mechanism will be removable and washable
The Spici Boi will be powered using standard North American Outlet
The Spici Boi will produce a warning sound if any spice containers are opened during the grinding process

System Overview

We will have a six grinder machine called “Spici Boi” that will be managed through a system that the user will tell it what to grind and how much of each individual spice. The Spici Boi will have six tubes. Each tube will have a slot where you can put up to one spice in each slot. Each tube will also have a grinder and a scale in order to measure the amount the user wants to grind. It will then fall and slide onto a tray where the user can pick up the tray with the freshly ground spices. The Spici Boi will have a user interface where it will have a way for the user to enter a name for each slot for each of the spices. It will also have the option to rename a slot in case you decide to replace a slot with a different spice. Simply click the name and it will have two options, Rename or Empty in case the slot is empty. Rename will allow you to enter a name for your spice and empty will simply put Empty in the slot. The user interface has an option called grind that when clicked the first slot of spice and the amount you want to grind. when done, you click next and the second spice and the amount you want to grind will then appear you until you get to the sixth spice. There will be pre-configured sizes such as teaspoon (tsp), tablespoon (tbs), ounce (oz), gram (g), etc.. or you can enter a specific measurement. Another option will be to save a combination of spices to grind so in a click of a button you will have your favorite spices freshly ground it will take you as the same process as grind but instead of grinding the spice it will ask you to name it and it will be stored.

Results

Results text and demo videos go here

Future Work

Implement Wifi into the Spici Boi for updates to keep the machine running smoothly.
Make the Spici Boi long lasting.
Update the UI for more settings and applications.