Smart Tongs
Serving tongs that signal portion size to cut food waste in dining halls.
Premise
This project was created for the Freshman Engineering Projects class at CU Boulder. Our group decided to design a product that would limit food waste within our community.
We approached the problem knowing that most food waste in university cafeterias is uneaten food being thrown away, which suggested that people often take more food than they can eat. So we made a product that tells users the recommended portion size for their food.
Decision
To tackle the problem, we decided to create tongs that give feedback to the user based on the amount of food being taken. In this project, I lead the mechanical aspect of the design.
Prototyping
This is the first functionally complete prototype of our product, which features a spring hinge and a user-feedback LED. It served as a proof of concept and let us identify design challenges.
Final design features
- Input/Output: OLED screen and vibrating motor for output, linear encoder and gyroscope for input
- Sturdy design: 3D printed enclosures, hinge and tong ends, aluminum sides
- Power: completely wireless with an enclosed battery and a wake-up circuit to save power
- Electrical: printed circuit board with an ESP32 for I/O and wake-up logic
My personal role
I was responsible for the mechanical portion of this project, which included CAD for the overall design of the tongs, the electronics enclosures and the hinge. I also helped solder electronics and wrote some of the microcontroller software. We used Onshape for easy collaboration.
CAD and schematics
Some technical documents used for this project are shown below.
More information
For more detailed information about our project, see our project report. If you have questions, feel free to get in touch.