Make Me A Drink, Drinkmo.

[Cabe Atwell’s] latest project is a work of art. Let us introduce the Drinkmotizer: a Raspberry Pi Drink Mixing Robot.

As [Cabe] says, almost every engineer has a drink-mixing robot on their project todo list. We’d probably have to agree; they’re functional, cool, and useful at parties.

You need the Drinkmotizer at your party… At some point, dexterity for drink mixing is lost at a gathering.

Drinkmo is your designated, sober, mixologist.

Your enabler.

Your friend.

Drinkmo works by rotating a long leadscrew that moves the mixing glass from bottle to bottle. The entire setup is made using aluminum extrusion, and is by nature, completely expandable. On the top shelf are gravity fed shot dispensers, controlled by 12VDC car lock actuators. The chaser station (at the end, on the right) works differently. The chaser bottle is actually pressurized by a paintball gun tank and dispensed using a solenoid valve. We hope he’s got a pressure regulator in there, considering the pressure capacity of paintball tanks can range from anywhere from 1000-3000PSI!

The entire system is controlled by a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian, and [Cabe] is using Tkinter for the GUI of the program. He’s got tons of info on the original forum post linked above (including the schematic!), and if you stick around after the break, there’s a very well produced video of Drinkmo in all its glory.

26 thoughts on “Make Me A Drink, Drinkmo.

  1. I like it, but I would offer some suggestions. The first one being to get rid of the screw drive. A belt would be better, or put a motor on the carriage itself. Secondly, instead of having an actuator for each liquor bottle, have a single actuator that pushes *up* to press on the release lever. This has the advantage that the liquor won’t be dispensed if the carriage is not in position (bonus points if you also detect a glass is present). Thirdly, get rid of the Arduino. What is it doing that the Pi itself can’t do with GPIO? Other than that, I want one of these…

      1. The dispensers that he is using have a single shot reservoir. When the actuator pulls up the lever it only releases a single shot of liquor. As far as the chaser bottles go using air pressure to dispense appears to be fairly accurate as well. A fixed volume of air displaces the same amount of liquid through the tubes.

        1. I didn’t think these were fixed volume dispensers (as are used in other barbots, ie, the Inebriator).. I believe these have an air hole and it will dispense as long as the actuator is open.

  2. Thanks for the great comments and to Hack-a-day for the laurels.

    Since I made the video, I put on a different stepper. Much larger. A change of something like 90oz/in to 280oz/in. It made it much quieter and faster. It is hard to tell in the video, but there is ramping at both ends of the travel.

    For the air supply, I used two regulators bringing it down to 5-20 psi at the chaser bottles. The macro-line would burst at the tank when the reg wasn’t at it’s lowest setting, btw. I always wanted to test and see how far I can take the 2-liters, pressure wise though. But, I didn’t want to make a mess.

    As I said in the video, I went with a leadscrew, not only to make drink within half of a thousandths of an inch, but because of the CNC lathe I build (Gunhead.com). I tried belt/platform style on “Project Goldie,” but didn’t like the huge belt. Plus, how else will someone crush their fingers around Drinkmo?
    (See “Project Goldie,” and my first attempt at animations on e14 from the Drinkmo post, at the top.)

    For the record, the bottle dispenser modules do meter each lever put to 1-shot. At one point int he video I only pull the actuator arms for a fraction of the time, so that only about 1/4 or 1/3 of a shot comes out of the reservoir.

    If anyone wants a Drinkmotizer of their own, message me on element14 or Twitter.

    Anyone read my post about other uses? Who wants a Soup-motizer or a Paint-motizer?

    Cabe

  3. Thanks for the updates Cabe!

    If you do a partial pull on the dispenser, does it refill again? Ie, if you dispense 1/3rd a shot, does it refill, or next time are you limited to 2/3rd a shot?

    I’m interested in setting up a pressurized dispenser for the mixers as well. I also saw ‘magictap’ online. Any thoughts there (no pressurized system, seems easy and low cost enough, don’t know how well it actually works).

    1. Warren,

      I didn’t pressurize the bottles for aesthetic reasons. I liked the idea of still pouring the adult beverages from their original glass vessels. Plus, I like all the moving parts. Believe me, those pressure adapters I made would have made it all much easier.

      But, how classy is going up to a single spout and getting your drink of choice sprayed out of a single nozzle? James Bond wouldn’t drink from a glorified self-serve soda machine…

      An early concept of Drinkmo had arms raise bottles and pour. However, I had to keep the cost down.

      Cabe

  4. Okay…so…why? I can see useful hacks, but obviously this thing has been done to death commercially already in venues like las vegas. Want a long island? They push a button on a dispense head and bam, you get a long island in a second.

    I guess maybe as a conversation piece but for $1500 you can get a premade system. Google bartender monsieur. Click on the third link. Its already commercially funded and available.

    Maybe next I can hack something together that will sense smoke and warn me I might have a fire in my house. Seriously, this topic has been done to DEATH!

  5. A drink mixing robot would certainly be convenient to have at parties. But at a bar it might be less appealing – you couldn’t ask it for advice when you have a problem. And could it detect if you were too drunk to drive home? Things to consider.

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