{"id":2248,"date":"2023-09-13T20:26:23","date_gmt":"2023-09-13T20:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hughqelliott.com\/blog\/?p=2248"},"modified":"2023-09-14T00:15:25","modified_gmt":"2023-09-14T00:15:25","slug":"corona-recharge-fridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hughqelliott.com\/blog\/corona-recharge-fridge\/","title":{"rendered":"Corona Recharge: Fridge Experience Design"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The last project I was working on when I left Thinkingbox is the Corona Recharge fridge. The concept was to open a fridge when a phone is on 10% battery or less. To accomplish this, it was proposed to use a webcam and machine learning to identify the battery level on a screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patrick Daggett, my colleague at Thinkingbox was the resident ML person so he set about training a model to recognize low battery. Taking into account models, makes, manufacturers, he must have spent a week on training. Once the model could see a low battery, the computer would send a signal via Serial to the micro-controller to open the fridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It fell to me to design the experience of the fridge. And the fridge itself. I sourced a few fridges, got buy-in on one and ordered the fridge. The fridge chosen was a Whynter freestanding 8.1 cu ft<\/a> merchandising fridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When you look at the promo video<\/a>, they show the initial concept model I was given. <\/p>\n\n\n

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They wanted a seamless door that couldn’t be opened manually. The bottle would show the interior, and there would be a battery graphic in the cut-out. This cut-out is what dictated the use of the Whynter, more than anything. The position of that cut-out meant most fridges would need a door made from scratch. The merchandising fridge has a big window as the door. Not only that, it could hold a lot of bottles. How do I know? I modelled a corona bottle, and duplicated it inside what I knew to be the inside of the fridge.<\/p>\n\n\n

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This also helped the client more easily understand capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, we needed to keep the fridge a fridge. Had to seal effectively and keep the contents cold. Also wouldn’t bleed cold air into the remaining structure and components.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I set about modelling a fridge casing. One that would integrate the fridge, computer, power supplies, controller etc etc. The door would be held closed by an electromagnet. Here’s the design I came up with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I added a six foot tall mannequin to show scale of the fridge. On top I designed a dock that could drop in and be integrated into the fabricated casing. I went through a number of iterations while taking into consideration; viewing angle of camera (Logitech Brio), angle of mobile device to mitigate reflections, distance from camera to mobile device, a magnetic top to be able to access the camera, a limit switch to let the computer know when a phone was in place, a wireless charging pad. Then I tried to make it as good-lookin’ as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Once I began to use the electromagnet, I realized I’d need to create a safety feature to avoid fingers being crushed. The magnet was part of a security system and has a draw strength of 280kg (617lbs). If the magnet turned back on and the door was being shut, it would snap shut. So I sourced a heavy duty plunger switch (like the one below). Only if that switch was depressed by closing the door entirely would the magnet engage. No crushed fingers! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To hide the hinges and give the fridge a cool look, I found Soss hinges. They are called “invisible hinges because they fold into themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Everything involved with control ran through an ESP32 dev board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My employment with Thinkingbox ended before I could see this project through. I’d met with the fabricators, sent them the models for the fridge casing. When I was let go, I sent over everything I’d bought and fabricated. It’s very cool to see that the project went live, regardless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\nThe last project I was working on when I left Thinkingbox is the Corona Recharge fridge. The concept was to…\n<\/div>\n
Continue reading “Corona Recharge: Fridge Experience Design”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[17,18,5,7,21,8,16,4,19,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-3d-modelling","category-3d-printing","category-build","category-code","category-creative-technology","category-design","category-electronics","category-fabrication","category-prototyping","category-user-experience","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughqelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughqelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughqelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughqelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughqelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2248"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hughqelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2261,"href":"https:\/\/hughqelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2248\/revisions\/2261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughqelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughqelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughqelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughqelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}