Some time ago I had this seemingly brilliant idea to design a vacuum top for my coffee bean containers, which I always purchased from Trader Joe’s. I already had a mechanical vacuum pump/stopper system for wine bottles, so it seemed like a natural fit to design a top that used the same pump. I could even see these tops getting sold at TJ’s along with the wine corks in a combo…who drinks wine and doesn’t like coffee? So excited, I kicked out a few graphic design concepts and starting going through some packaging ideas.

I figured I could work in a hexagon pattern into the mechanical structure and play off this bee keeper/bean keeper parallel.  At the same time, I wired up an arduino and pressure sensor to measure the stability of the vacuum over time. Unfortunately I was always getting air leaks through the sensor cable bundle. I tried several sealing methods, but pressure loss was always relatively immediate and complete. No one was going to buy a vacuum top that didn’t keep vacuum. Eventually I realized that my sensor laden solution was overkill and added unnecessary failure modes. Instead, I just glued a wine stopper through a drilled hole in the metal canister bottom.

This thing leaked too…and then I realized that Trader Joes coffee containers aren’t airtight–essentially killing the whole idea. Could have saved myself plenty of time by doing a proof of concept first before all the other work. Good reminder to prototype relentlessly–sometimes the simpler the better.