What is Vouzounos?
Vouzounos is the codename for our modified frappé mixer. See more about the the greek coffee frappé in the Wikipedia article.
Before becoming Vouzounos, the mixer was a traditional frappé mixer as the ones sold at Parthenon Foods.
As both I and Fivos were taking 6.170 (MIT's hardcore software engineering class), the reduced efficiency of the traditional mixer was simply not enough to satisfy our coffee needs. And so Project Vouzounos evolved:
Version 1.0-alpha (Sept 2003)
- The battery compartment that supplied 6V to the motor was disconnected and the power adoptor from Fivos's laptop was used instead (15V DC). Result: Very powerful and efficient, but the motor fried after about one week
Version 1.0-beta (Oct 2003)
- Replaced old fried motor with a new one (12V input) and the laptop adapter with a new one (12V 800mA output). Also removed the capacitors and resistors that for some reason were inside the mixer.
- Difficulty: New motor's shaft was thicker than old one's. Overcame by extremely hi-tech moves. (push front shaft into the motor shaft until the shaft comes out from the back of the motor)
- Difficulty: New motor is bigger. Won't fit in nice blue cover. Overcame by putting a lot of tape around it. Result: Ugly cover but worked great:
Photos of Vouzounos beta:
Version 1.0 (final)
- We observed that the need to drink coffee was directly related to the hours spent working on programming assignments on our laptops. This observation, along with the fact that requiring a plug for Vouzounos to work was annoying, motivated our decision into making Vouzounos portable.
- By coincidence, the webcam of Fivos's sister Lenia became malfunctioning, so the idea of using the USB cable from it seemed perfect. Moreover, why not also use the sleek, sexy spherical webcam cover for the mixer as well? The result: USB Vouzounos.
Photos of USB Vouzounos:
Videos of USB Vouzounos at work:
Also in Quicktime:
Making frappe
Showing off