A machinist in Yilan County has built an automated pour-over coffee machine that can be operated wirelessly by a cellphone through Bluetooth.
Yu Teh-yuan (游德源), 62, said he was motivated by his love for coffee to build the machine and that he left it at the Suao Township (蘇澳) community office for local residents to use.
“How does this thing work?” Yu quoted one local resident as asking him, adding that many people gathered around the machine to see it when he first brought it to the office.
Photo: Chang Yi-chen, Taipei Times
Yu graduated from the National Taipei Institute of Technology (now the National Taipei University of Technology) and served as township warden for several years, during which he developed a taste for pour-over coffee.
He once donated the proceeds he made from selling coffee to a Penghu County community center, where he volunteered with friends, Yu said.
He was happy to help the center, which takes care of children with disabilities, but realized that making several cups of pour-over coffee by hand was a very tiring process, he said, adding that he got the idea to make an automatic pour-over coffee machine after he returned to Yilan.
“I am always coming up with ideas for machines, but actually setting to work and building a machine is a difficult process,” he said.
The machine took him about one year to design and build, and he made several revisions along the way, Yu said, adding that he often reordered the same component several times before finding the right size and specification for his machine.
“If you count all the failed cups of coffee, I would say I have tested at least a few thousand cups,” he said.
Using his phone, Yu can set the quantity of coffee he wishes to make, after which the beans are freshly ground and the water is poured. The whole process takes about five minutes, he said.
After a coffee machine at the township office broke down, Yu replaced it with his newly built automated machine, which has been well-received by township residents, he said.
While the machine is still a work in progress, he hopes to eventually work out the kinks and then donate it to the community center in Penghu where he volunteered a few years ago, Yu said.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS