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CD Tea

Caffeination is an important cornerstone of Raspberry Pi development. Gordon in particular drinks so much tea in any given day that we are concerned for the sustainability of Sri Lanka’s plantations, not to mention the colour of his insides. (Conversation at 10.30 this morning: “Gordon, how many cups of tea would you estimate you drink in a day?” “Em…fifteen? I’ve already had five this morning, I drink it through the day and I usually have at least one in bed at night.”)

In an act of one-upmanship, Carrie Anne, James and the other people who write our educational resources have been showing us the state of their mugs this morning too.

Because we love you and want to make you happy, we are not illustrating this post with a picture of Gordon’s insides.

We like to make sure that Gordon, Carrie and the rest of the office tea-drinkers are doing as much work as possible, and are undistracted by the need to steep yet another bag. So we were delighted to happen upon this project from Andrey Chilikin. This is what happens when you are innovative enough to turn one of those antique computer-cup-holders on its end and add that standby of makers everywhere, the trusty lollipop stick. Hook it up to the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins, and Bob’s your uncle.

tea bag

If you’d like to automate your own tea habit with old hardware, you’ll find all the code you need and a wiring schematic at Andrey’s GitHub. Thanks Andrey!

31 comments

Love this idea. Tea brewing has never been easier. Hope you are having a good new year the Pi team.

Thanks Luke! Hope your 2017’s going well too!

Perhaps the ulTeamate homeBrew project?

My tea cup is 32 Oz, and I drain it at least three times a day…
I need to either kick the habit or go get another cup going…

I drink one giant mug of coffee (we’ve got a machine that grinds beans here, and it’ll do a half-caffeinated and half-decaf mix) when I get to work in the morning, and then stick to water for the rest of the day. Compared to everybody else here, I’m a paragon of purity.

how do I measure how many ounces my cup has … I hav’nt got any scales ……………..

This project, combined with the “Is the toilet free” project referenced in the sidebar, could cause office conflict!

Happy New Year!

Those projects in the sidebar are not machine-chosen; I thought they made a nice pairing. :D

huh, I thought the Auto-Decantor and the Beer Fridge too good to be just a concidence

At least Gordon will never get ulcers…the tannic acid in tea will see to that.

That and his relentlessly sunny disposition.

Love this idea! Happy new year. I love Raspberry Pi :) :)

no problem there are mountains covered with tea trees in Kerala !

What the heck is that poncy pink muck?

Each of the fifteen cups consumed by the average Raspberry Pi user (aka me) needs to be brewed for at least 3 minutes with a Taylor’s of Harrogate Yorkshire Tea (Hard Water) bag and water at precisely 100°C. There’s no strings on those proper tea bags.

So you’re going to need a thermocouple and a MAX31855 SPI device to test the water temp. Then you’ll achieve something more useful than your hacked up Teasmade.

Our water here in Basingstoke is the hardest in Europe. Without masses of filtering, you get a free stick of chalk solidified out in every kettle full.

BTW, you can still get “Vintage” Teasmades at Argos http://www.argos.co.uk/product/9104653

I suspect the pink muck is Raspberry tea (hopefully only chosen as an appropriate demo flavour). My question is what would be needed to add a lux sensor and a light source so that you could determine the density of the brew dynamically rather than by number of dunks? Plain white light or a laser?