This Device Guarantees the Perfect Stroopwafel Droop
Eamon Magd built this device to tell him how long to leave his stroopwafel atop his hot beverage.
A stroopwafel is a delicious “syrup waffle” that is popular in the Netherlands and often served with hot drinks like coffee and tea. It is a layered morsel with two thin, crispy waffles surrounding a filling made from syrup, butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. They’re served at room temperature, but are commonly placed atop the accompanying beverage in order to heat and soften the treat. But as a foreigner in that land, Eamon Magd lacked the experience to bring his stoopwafel to the perfect temperature and consistency. So, he built this device to figure it out.
A Dutch person might leave their stroopwafel atop their beverage for a specific amount of time or they might observe the droopiness of the pastry as it warms and softens. Eamon wanted an objective and infallible machine to perform the same sort of analysis, since intuition was failing him.
Timing something is easy, but a stopwatch alone would fail to account for variables like beverage type, beverage temperature, beverage volume, mug diameter, ambient air temperature, stroopwafel recipe, and more. Eamon needed data and the most important variable was clearly temperature — specifically, the temperature on the surface of the stroopwafel. His device collects that with a temperature sensor connected to a knockoff Arduino Uno Rev3 board.
Stroopwafel surface temperature and time are pretty helpful data points, but Eamon went one step further and harnessed computer vision to recreate a Dutch person’s experienced eye. He programmed a computer vision application that runs on his laptop and watches the stroopwafel through the webcam. It looks for movement, as indicated by blurry pixels. Eamon theorized that movement would only occur when the stroopwafel warmed enough to start drooping.
With some data collected over the course of many stroopwafel experiments, Eamon was able to train a linear regression model to recognize the ideal conditions to begin consumption. When that moment occurs, the Arduino sounds an alarm through a passive buzzer. Now Eamon can enjoy the perfect stroopwafel whenever he visits a cafe, assuming that he remembers to bring his laptop, the Arduino, and the sensors along with him.