Italian pasta brand, Barilla introduces a passive cooker– an open-source project to reduce CO2 emissions

Arduino has written a blog post on Barilla using an Arduino Nano 33 BLE board to provide an open-source project for the passive cooking of pasta– makes a remarkable positive impact on the environment by reducing CO2 emissions by up to 80 percent, as claimed. As the blog post says,

“Italian grandmothers might cringe at the idea, but Barilla’s clear step-by-step guide,”

aims to bring a significant shift in the way Italians cook pasta, spaghetti, penne, and tagliatelle.

Barilla has provided detailed instructions on building your own passive cooker smart timer device, which equips a temperature sensor and an Arduino Nano 33 BLE board. The Arduino board is programmed using the Arduino IDE 2.0 and fitted inside a 3D-printed biodegradable casing. The smart device is also connected to a free mobile application to let the user know when to pour the pasta into boiling water and when to turn off the stove– a step towards saving energy.

“We wanted to make this project open source so everyone can make their copy and even improve it if they want to,” Barilla’s website states. “That’s Italian for “Hey, Arduino community! Let’s start cooking.”

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Arduino Nano 33 BLE board follows the same design as the Arduino Nano board, but features a more powerful processor– the nRF52840 from Nordic Semiconductors with a 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4 CPU clocked up to a frequency of 64MHz. As primarily designed for wearable devices, Barilla has selected the Arduino Nano 33 BLE board for its smart passive cooker in need of short-distance wireless communication.

Inside the open-source downloadable files, the company has provided 3D object design files for the Barilla thermometer bottom, Nano base, and top, along with Magnet insert, and ribbon holding insert. Other files include the most important Arduino program file which can be edited according to the customer’s requirement and add more capabilities to the hardware design. Due to its open-source nature, Barilla wants to provide a starting step for designers and hobbyists to come up with a more powerful and interesting smart cooking device.

For more information on the smart passive cooker, head to the official product page.