Check out this great Raspberry Pi powered microwave from Nathan Broadbent:

A few months ago, I was inspired by this post on Reddit, titled: Food items should have QR codes that instruct the microwave exactly what to do. Like high for 2 minutes, let stand 1 minute, medium 1 minutes..

I thought this was a pretty cool idea, and that it would be a fun project for a Raspberry Pi. I agreed with the people who thought using UPC barcodes would be better, since products already have them, so I went with a barcode scanner + online product database.

Here’s a summary of the features that I’ve added to my microwave:

• Re-designed touchpad
• Nicer sounds
• Clock is automatically updated from the internet
• Can be controlled with voice commands
• Can use a barcode scanner to look up cooking instructions from an online database
• There weren’t any online microwave cooking databases around, so I made one: http://microwavecookingdb.com
• The microwave has a web page so you can control it from your phone (why not), and set up cooking instructions for products
• Tweets after it’s finished cooking something (See https://twitter.com/rbmicrowave)

Nathan shared his materials and code so you can try this out for yourself here!