Ever feel the need to have your very own alcohol vending machine at home? Well if you do, [Ben] and [Dan] have just the Arduino based machine for you!
It was actually part of a school assignment for product design at Brunel University – the whole thing was designed and built in just over a week. The machine accepts and counts coins giving you a total readout on the LCD screen. When the correct amount is inserted you can select your shot and the machine will pour you a stiff one.
The thing we like about this vending machine — we’re not sure if it actually qualifies as a barbot — is that it doesn’t have any fancy pumps. In fact, it just uses two inexpensive solenoid valves and gravity to dispense the drink, much like a typical bar bottle dispenser.
It sounds like they’re considering commercializing it, but we can see quite a few problems with a machine that will accept coins from anyone and pour out a drink.
[via HackedGadgets]
What problems? As long as it’s not open to the general public, you can have any sort of vending machine you like.
These kinds of robotic bartenders are mostly being marketed to homes and businesses, instead of lisenced pubs and restaurants because they have to card people and watch that they don’t drink too much.
Very nice except for the choice of vodka. It’s better to boycott Russian vodkas because of Russia’s invasive tendencies.
Smirnoff is British now.
Please drink responsibly. I’m choking on the irony. sigh.
i for one would like to know how they reliably detected the coin input. i have a similar coin unit and i had trouble reliably detecting when a coin was accepted on my arduino.
How are the solenoids connected to the bottle? it looks like they’re just using tape,but it seems like there are no spills..