Capacitive Touch Kitchen Timer

A close friend of mine came up with an idea for a kitchen gadget. He wondered what a simple touch-controlled kitchen timer would be like, and so I decided to test his idea and build a simple-to-use capacitive touch kitchen timer.

The operation is (hopefully) very simple and intuitive. To set the time, the user touches the center of the device. The gadget will then show the previously set minutes. Users can change the minutes by moving a finger around the top surface of the device. A clockwise motion increases the time, and a counter-clockwise motion decreases the time:

The project consists of a custom 3D-printed case, three custom PCBs (one of which uses an ATMega328PU with the Arduino bootloader as the brain of the device), and it's powered by a standard 9V battery.

One of the main benefits of using this gadget over a smartphone is that you can keep your phone clean and safe from spills when working in the kitchen.

You can find details about the schematic here.

I uploaded and described the source code on this page.

Lastly, you can find details about the 3D-printed case here.