Bun-O-Meter

Last semester (Spring 2022), I was working on applying to internships. During an interview for a company that I was really excited about, I mentioned that I was planning on learning Arduino for fun which prompted them to say that if I ended up working for them, I would be using Arduino a lot. After the interview I decided to try and teach myself Arduino in time for the follow up interview to show them that I was invested in this opportunity and willing to learn new skills.

I had a week before the next interview so I set about teaching myself the basics using Adafruit's learning modules. With the basics down, I thought up a project, built the circuit, modeled the housing, and assembled a working product to bring with me.

When trying to decide what my project would be, I wanted to be able to display a couple of the skills I had learned and show some thoughtful design as well. I decided on what is essentially a thermometer. Depending on the temperature read by a tmp36 temperature sensor, a small servo points at different values. After brainstorming some different design ideas, I modeled it after retro alarm clocks. I also wanted to make it a little more interesting and personable than just a thermometer, so instead of measuring in F or C, I displayed the temperature in terms of buns. I finished my design just in time and was able to demo it at the follow up interview where it helped me land the job!

finished Bun-O-Meter