Introduction: Shampoo Vending Machine

We are trying to build this shampoo vending machine prototype for reducing plastic wastes.
Vending machines for variety of products are further prevalent nowadays. For instance, car vending machine had been implemented practically as well in Singapore recently. In the wake of unavoidable demand of plastic bottles and mankind's damages to environment, we were inspired to design the vending machine.

Since most of the plastics waste of shower products were often unreplaceable and unrecyclable (too dirty) in metropolis. We then built this vending machine aimed to sell hair washing products solely, without the plastic containers. Plastic bottles are fairly reusable and durable for storing the shampoos, so we tried to encourage people reuse them for buying shampoos.

This vending machine will sell shampoo solely, customers are expected to bring their own containers. We aimed at reducing pollutants from traditional body cleaning product wastes.

Step 1: Buy Stuff You Need

material required:

  1. MDFwood 900*600*3mm *3
  2. MDFwood 600*600*3mm *1
  3. 6.9mm plastic tube 2meter
  4. 9.12mm plastic tube 2meter
  5. Air tube (CO2Tubes）2m
  6. Raspberry Pi3 With touch screen
  7. breadboard
  8. 6V air pump motor
  9. 6v battery
  10. battery to wire adapter
  11. wires
  12. Big bottle
  13. Extension cord
  14. Shampoo
  15. Battery box
  16. L293D IC chip

Tools needed

  1. Laser cutter
  2. electric drill
  3. Yellow glue
  4. scissor
  5. Glass glue

Step 2: Make the Case

Use laser cutter to cut the MDF wood according to this blue print

Drill Holes on 40*15cm wood

drill whole on side for switch

Make whole that is size of your rasberry pi screen on the front wood

laser craft some Words of your choice

Step 3: Stick the Case Together Using Yellow Glue

Stick The case together using Yellow glue

Step 4: Connect the Wires Together

connect the battery switch and the motor together with wires withe the help of scissor

Step 5: Drill Holes on Caps

Drill holes on the caps of bottle s little smaller than the size of your small plastic tubes and the air tubes and let the tubes go through the holes.

put the air tube to the motor to test if it works

Step 6: Test the System by Motor If It Can Pump the Shampoo Out

Step 7: Insert the Whole System in to the Case

Plug the switch in to the switch hole and put the liquid tubes one side in the hole of the bottle and other side to the machine output hole.

Step 8: Test Your Machine Again

Step 9: Connect the Water Flow Sensor to the Output Tube

I stick them with glass glue so they will not leak shampoo and tide with floraseal.

Step 10: Insert Raspberry Pi in the Hole and Turn It on and Set Up

We used Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian and you should First install raspbian on The Pi.

I recommend you to use NOOBS if you are starter for rapberry pi 3 to install raspbian.

After installing raspbian, follow this instructions in the youtube video to install python.dev

Step 11: Set Up the Breadboard

connect the L293D chips according to this tutorial

https://business.tutsplus.com/tutorials/controllin...

and connect the flow sensor ground to Raspberry pi ground pin, red pin to Rasp pi 5V pin and the yellow pin to the input pin ( in my case I used pin17)

Step 12: Connect Your Device and Test With These Python Code

Connect to a DC motor with these tutorials. I used pin 4,18,23 to connect to the L293D Chips to control the motor.

The blink.py is used to test the function of the GPIO whether it works or not,

The motor.py to test the motor.

Attachments

Step 13: Pack Stuff and Put It Into the Machine

I used a paper box that could fit in the machine to pack the raspberry pi ,motor battery together in a neat and tidy way.

Step 14: Test Final Step

put shampoo in to bottle and put your bottle in to the machine.

Test your pump with motor.py

Step 15: Furthermore...

Record the rate of the flow of shampoo

Edit the python code so it will generate files when the motor is running to see how many shampoo was pumped

set auto upload the data to cloud so you can check it online when is the shampoo empty so you have to refill it.

Add a payment method to it( I recommend Octopus in HK or Apple pay maybe?)

for further improvement, you may use a MCP3008 Chips to read speed of shampoo flowmeter. As Raspberry pi cannot read AC voltage, you will need a ADC to convert it. so it will be more precise.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B7oTpBj1gE...

Here is the Link for the photo in my process, If you want to take a look at our process. Enjoy Making.