Building A Diet Coke Button

[mars91] had an interesting problem to solve—his girlfriend often requested Diet Coke, but yelling for one across the apartment was frustrating and impractical. A dedicated Diet Coke button seemed like the perfect solution, so that’s precisely what he built.

The Diet Coke Button is a relatively simple device. A small silver push-button activates an Adafruit Feather M0 to send out a signal via its RFM95 LoRa radio. That signal is picked up by the receiver device, which runs on an ESP32. It’s got an RFM95 LoRa module, which receives signals from the button and sounds an alarm to indicate the request for a Diet Coke. The ESP32 also hosts a basic website which allows Diet Coke requests to be submitted via the web, as well as general submissions of a textual nature. The latter are displayed on a small OLED display. If you’re feeling bold, you can even set up the ESP32 to be accessible from the outside Internet, with [mars91] explaining how to do so using a Cloudflare tunnel for your own protection.

The only problem is that delivering the Diet Coke is still something you have to do by hand. Perhaps a future upgrade would involve some kind of small apartment-spanning railway for the delivery of ice-cold cans to designated stations.

It’s a unique project, and one that recalls us of an interesting talk about a different type of call button.

53 thoughts on “Building A Diet Coke Button

      1. Sure, a roomba or similar device can be upgraded to a line-following robot. But this is expensive, because you need a roomba (or similar). A simple robot chassis could do the same but is much cheaper.

    1. Pressing the call button triggers the systems of the fridge-a-vator* to move to the location of the call device, and upon door closure following selection of said beverage or sandwich, the fridge-a-vator* returns to the pre-selected default location…. (patent and trademark pending)…

  1. The regular consumption of carbonated drinks, even without sugar, is associated with a reduced lifespan. If you think about the dynamics of the scenario described in the article you can see one reason why, and no I am not talking about the lethality of a thrown can of beverage.

    1. Hmmm… You fell for the correlation and causation logical fallacy. People who drink diet sodas have a shorter lifespan, so it’s the fault of the soda, right? Or… Hear me out… maybe it’s because diet sodas are often consumed by people who are overweight and/or have diabetes, two groups with an already shorter life span. Please leave the science to the scientists.

  2. Basically, there is evidence that artificial sweeteners can change the gut microbiome somehow leading to metabolic syndrome which then causes weight gain.

    One of the studies I’ve read simplified: in one set of mice metabolic syndrome was induced via large amounts of artificial sweeteners – another set of normal mice had their gut microbiome sterilized away and they then received fecal transplants from the metabolic syndrome mice – they immediately had metabolic syndrome.

    So, drink or eat artificially sweetened stuff and maybe get fat or fatter. Don’t hear anything about that from the “diet” stuff pushers, do you? No need to wonder why.

    Just two of many studies I include at random saying the same thing. I include only one link since there may be a one-link limit to posts here.

    Artificial sweeteners produce the counterintuitive effect of inducing metabolic derangements
    2013

    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3772345/

    Abstract

    The negative impact of consuming sugar-sweetened beverages on weight and other health outcomes has been increasingly recognized; therefore, many people have turned to high-intensity sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin as a way to reduce the risk of these consequences. However, accumulating evidence suggests that frequent consumers of these sugar substitutes may also be at increased risk of excessive weight gain, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. This paper discusses these findings and considers the hypothesis that consuming sweet-tasting but noncaloric or reduced-calorie food and beverages interferes with learned responses that normally contribute to glucose and energy homeostasis. Because of this interference, frequent consumption of high-intensity sweeteners may have the counterintuitive effect of inducing metabolic derangements.

    Artificial sweetener is a growing threat for metabolic syndrome: why is extra attention required?
    2023

      1. No, there is no human evidence that reasonable amounts of artificial sweeteners have any effect on the gut microbiome. You know what has bee proven to, though? Sugar. As said above, leave the science to the scientists.

  3. Most if not all people I know that drink Diet Cokes are ruthlessly addicted to it (the sweeteners themselves are addicting I guess in addition to the caffeine) and are also jerks about it or skew towards a-holism in general. Fun projects aside the general personality trait of asking someone to do something for you that you could darn well do yourself is pretty off-putting. Your mileage may vary.

  4. A more rudimentary solution is to throw the old empty container at the spouse’s head in order to signal the need for a new one. OR maybe she could get her lazy rear up and get it herself. Put the toilet seat back up and make me a sandwich while you up, woman! :P

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