Becky Stern’s machine brings the NYC hot dog experience to you

For her gift to Colin Furze as a participant in this year’s YouTube Makers Secret Santa event, Becky Stern opted to bring the street food of New York City in the form of a mostly automatic hot dog dressing machine. It was designed with the intention of letting a user set down a hot dog at the top of a small roller ramp and then have it slide along as it gets covered in various authentic toppings. 

An Arduino Uno is responsible for controlling all three servo motors via a single PCA9685 driver module and the attached Adafruit Sound Board, which is loaded with sounds that Stern recorded around Manhattan. A separate Adafruit Pro Trinket sits at the base and sends commands to an RGB LED matrix in order to scroll text across the display. 

– Werbung –

There are two servos dedicated to the task of dispensing mustard from a squeeze bottle, as one applies pressure with a pull while the other shakes violently to produce a messy drizzle. At the end of the rollers is a much simpler configuration, which has a servo motor that turns 90 degrees to dump an onion sauce mixture over the hot dog. 

After producing a few more decorations for her mini-NYC hot dog cart, Stern shipped her creation across the pond to Furze where he got to test it for himself, as seen at the 8:50 timestamp in his video. You can view the process of making this project in more detail here on Instructables or by watching Sterns video below!