Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks

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Part II: Advanced Hacks, Tools, and Techniques

Project Demo

You should now have a coffee pot whose coffee status can be queried from

any local web browser. Figure 15-17 is a picture of my coffeemaker with the

web server connected. The machine is in my kitchen and is connected to the

home 10BaseT network.

Next to my bed, I have a PC connected to my home LAN. My Internet coffee

machine has a local IP address. When that address is opened up, a web page

pops up. It looks like there is hot coffee waiting for me downstairs!

Extensions

Although this hack was built for sensing the temperature and the existence

of coffee in a coffee pot, this system could be used in many other places as

well. For example, the temperature probe could be placed inside a refrigera-

tor or a freezer, and the moisture probe could be used to detect if the door

is open or not. Or, the temperature sensor could be placed inside a PC to

measure system temperature.

The SPI port on the SitePlayer board can be connected to other sensors and

output ports as well. If you wanted to control a light or a motor from your

web server, an SPI-based I/O port chip could be connected to a relay. A

web camera could be mounted on a two-axis pan-tilt head with its motors

controlled by the SitePlayer.

Figure 15-17: Internet coffeemaker ready to go

Project Demo

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1/21/2002 1:36:00 PM