How to make an automatic soap dispenser
Years ago, those of us who are already a certain age, we dreamed of having one of those devices that we saw in science fiction movies or that showed us how they imagined the future could be. That future has already arrived and although flying cars are not common, there are many advances in the use of home automation in homes.
Thanks to those improvements made in our day-to-day things, we have all improved or can improve how we interact with our house when cleaning it using robot vacuum cleaners or we prepare rice and even the first coffee in the morning. And it is that manufacturers like Xiaomi among others have been launching really interesting smart home products.
Of course, not always all the options on the market cover the exact needs of each user. That’s why the Raspberry Pi continues to demonstrate why it is such an interesting device, because with a little ingenuity you can do things like this: create a automatic soap dispenser to supply dishwasher when you are washing dishes.
Yes, a user created a dispenser equipped with a proximity sensor so that as soon as the scourer or sponge that you use to wash dishes, glasses, cutlery, etc. is brought closer, they dispense a specific amount on it. How do i do it? Well, with a list of parts that really anyone could get.
- Raspberry Pi Pico, but it could be worth any other Raspberry Pi models. So it will depend on other aspects to choose one or the other.
- A peristaltic pump, a type of positive displacement hydraulic pump used to pump / dispense different types of liquids. The only thing is that it must work at 12v
- Ultrasonic distance sensor
- HW-095 control module
With all this and knowing how each device is connected to each other and then to the Raspberry Pi, the next thing is to use a code that will be the one that allows you to define how much soap or dishwasher is going to dispense when it detects that it has to be done. In this case, the user who created this dispenser established 0.5 seconds as the time that he would be making soap, but it can be modified to suit the user or the amount that the used pump dispenses.
From there it is a matter of polishing details such as the use of the bottle that will be used for the liquid, how the casing will be where the pump will go and even other elements. But in the end the interesting thing is the components and code topic, so that you can replicate it to your liking if you consider it interesting. Something that you could do not so much for the home but for your workplace. Here let your imagination fly.
Code for soap dispenser
This project, the work of FireMarsMallow has the code that the Raspberry Pi should run available to everyone on GitHub. So you just have to go, copy it and after mounting your own dispenser, run it to get it working.
So if you start doing it, it inspires you for another idea or to adopt something that you already had, do not stop sharing your creations with us. Of course, if you do not want to complicate yourself or you do not have a Raspberry Pi lying around at hand, you can also choose to acquire an automatic soap dispenser that there are of many types and prices at this point in the movie.
