IOTea

My first hackathon. One of my friends at Oxford has a notable obsession with loose leaf tea, and pushed the idea of an automatic loose leaf tea brewing system controlled via web app. It was too brilliant not to have a crack at it. The day before the hack my friend and I went shopping/scavenging for things we would need.

My contribution was the construction side of things. When the hack began I sawed the back off a kettle and removed the mechanism that would normally turn it on and off, to replace it with one operated by a linear actuator that we could control automatically. I then cut a hole in the baseplate and bottom of the same kettle so that water could flow out of it.

Then I designed, measured up, cut and assembled the tower structure that our system would be housed in. I did this slowly, obsessed with not making any mistakes, since we only had exactly the right amount of wood to construct the large panels required. I still somehow introduced an off-by-one error so I probably needn’t have bothered. This is the long form of the explanation of how I came to be sat outside Oxford’s Mathematical Institute at 2am in November making an absolute racket with a powerdrill.

I left the hack early in order to make it to a friend’s birthday in London. My team were more than capable of finishing the work that needed doing in my absence. Though I never enjoyed the sweet caffeinated fruits of our labour I’m told it made several good cups of tea that were enjoyed by my team and a good chunk of the sponsors. I regret not doing my part to a higher standard, and not having any part in the more technical side of the device, eg. the control of the servo motors, the frontend web interface. Though I’m hardly complaining, this was tremendously good fun.

We were awarded ‘Best Hardware Hack’ by Netcraft, Facebook’s prize for ‘Aligning With Our Vision’, and MLH’s prize for the ‘Most Ergonomic Hack’. Oxford Entrepreneurs (who were running the event) seemed interested in helping us bring a more advanced version of the product to market. We told them we’d think about it. Really must get back to them at some point…