“Wizard Staff” or “Wisest Wizard” is a drinking game played at parties where the attendees participate by taping the empty cans of the drinks they’ve consumed on top of one another to form a staff of inebriated power. A person with a longer staff is considered to be at a higher level and can therefore command lesser wizards to pound their current beverage to a point they see fit. Not everyone at a party necessarily drinks their tasty libation of choice from a can however. So, [Ahmed] and his group came up with a solution for those of us who might alternately prefer to wield a pint glass of power instead.
In their hardware project for Hack Illinois 2015, [Brady Salz], [Ahmed Suhyl], [Dario Aranguiz], and [Kashev Dalmia] decided to add a zest of tech to the game. For their updated rendition, glasses are equipped with battery packs for mobility, a Spark micro-controller, and different colored LEDs as indicators. A couple of wires reach into the bottom of each glass to measure conductivity and keep track of the number of times it is filled and then emptied. In leu of towers of aluminum husks and duct-tape, the group developed a simple Android app for participants to log into which will track and visualize the standings of each player registered to one of the glasses. They even created a pebble version of the app that will display all the same information in case you don’t want to risk handling your phone while drinking… heh.
For an added level of fun, once a player reaches a certain level above someone else, they unlock the option to “challenge” the lesser adversary. By selecting that person’s user name in the app, the LED and buzzer on their glass will spring to life, letting them know they’ve been chosen to chug the rest of their drink. If you’re curious how they made it work, you can check out the team’s code on Github and maybe take a stab at giving the game a makeover of your own.
if I were them I’d get a patent together ASAP. That would fly off the shelves of Spencer’s/Thinkgeek.
Haha! First to file now, bitches! *Digitally runs off to USPTO.gov*
Seriously though, prior art?
I thought that blog posts didn’t count as prior art.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_as_a_source_of_prior_art
“Internet publications can be relied on as prior art under United States patent law. The effective date of the publication will be determined by evidence, such a date of posting listed in the publication itself, or a date of archiving in the Internet Archive.”
Yeah, the only tricky thing is by whose authority. It’d have to be cached by Google or something, because anybody can manipulate their own page. But relying on your shitty blog post instead of a patent is pretty stupid, even if the patent system is completely fucked.
that’s only valid in ameritardia
Just got that fixed, thanks!
Just remember, as all wizards know — pinky out!
Drunk people are the most creative. I got fired from my last job for being too creative.
The human race is doomed.
How can you be the wisest wizard without a staff?
Kickstarter!!!!!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/932466859/brewstaff-wizard-clip
One of the creators here, I need this in my life.
if the kickstarter fails can we have the plans for 3d printing this?
One of the creators here, we were actually promised 3D printers during our 36 hour hackathon (yes that was hour many hours we had to do this from scratch) but we didn’t get access to any. Definitely, in the future we will try to 3D print this so that it looks nicer and is sturdier!
the key point is the sensor, which can measure if a glass is full, half-full, .. or empty.
the web system, wifi, led etc …are nothing.
Somewhen back on HaD was a homebrew capacitive dog water bowl sensor. Try something like that and you won’t have to poke wires into the drinks.