Cocktail Barbot Takes Things Up A Level

April 17, 2019 by 7 Comments

Mixing a cocktail is considered as much an art as a science. The practice is studied dilligently by bartenders the world over. Of course, for any given human task, there’s always another human building a robot to automate it. [CamdenS5] is one such human, with a cocktail mixing barbot with a few tricks up its sleeve.

As you’d expect, there’s a smattering of the usual alcoholic liquids and mixers, along with a battery of pumps for fluid delivery. The fun doesn’t end there, though. There’s a linear actuator capable of putting out 500 N for slicing limes, and a mint and sugar dispenser as well. If that wasn’t enough, there’s even a muddling station to help bring out the flavours just right.

This is a machine that takes a broader look at the process behind making a good cocktail. It’s not just about lumping ingredients into a glass – it takes finesse and care to get the best results. It’s not the first barbot we’ve seen – this one is built in a grandfather clock.

A Grandfather Clock BarBot

February 1, 2018 by 10 Comments

As the saying goes, it’s five o’clock somewhere; when the clock finally strikes the hour, that same clock can pour you a drink thanks to redditor [Diggedypomme].

This bar-clock can dispense beverages with up to four different spirits and four mixers, and takes orders over voice, keyboard, or web-controls. A belt-driven drink loading platform pushes out through a spring-loaded door and once the vessel is in place and the order received, peristaltic pumps dispense the spirits while servos open taps for the mixers — a far easier method to administer the often carbonated liquids. A Raspberry Pi acts as this old-timer’s brain, an Arduino controls the lights, and a HAT to controls the servos. Here’s a more in-depth tour of what’s going on behind the bar, but check out the video after the break for a full run through of a few drink orders!

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Open Source Barbot Needs Only Two Motors

August 31, 2017 by 16 Comments

Most drinkbots are complicated—some intentionally so, others seemingly by design necessity. If you have a bunch of bottles of booze you still need a way to get it out of the bottles in a controlled fashion, usually through motorized pouring or pumping. Sometimes all thoe tubes and motors and wires looks really cool and sci fi. Still, there’s nothing wrong with a really clean design.

[Lukas Šidlauskas’s] Open Source Barbot project uses only two motors to actuate nine bottles using only a NEMA-17 stepper to move the tray down along the length of the console and a high-torque servo to trigger the Beaumont Metrix SL spirit measures. These barman’s bottle toppers dispense 50 ml when the button is pressed, making them (along with gravity) the perfect way to elegantly manage so many bottles. Drink selection takes place on an app, connected via Bluetooth to the Arduino Mega running the show.

The Barbot is an Open Source project with project files available from [Lukas]’s GitHub repository
and discussions taking place in a Slack group.

If it’s barbots you’re after, check out this Synergizer 4-drink barbot and the web-connected barbot we published a while back.

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Synergizer: The Emergency Key-Turn Barbot

May 25, 2014 by 10 Comments

Synergizer: Emergency Drink Dispenser

It’s been a rough day at the office. You need a break. But by yourself? No, what you need is to be Synergized! This Barbot only works if all four keys are inserted and turned — kind of like a nuclear launch procedure — only then will it dispense four perfectly sized drinks to make your day better.

The Synergizer uses an Arduino to control a belt driven linear actuator which moves the spout from cup to cup. A series of reed switches along the length provide feedback to the system for positional control. The machine makes use of a peristaltic pump, called the Bartendro Dispenser, which pumps an exact volume of your liquid of choice into each cup. The cool thing with peristaltic pumps is they are self priming,and capable of pumping an exact volume of liquid every time.

[Nick Poole], the designer, also included a CPU fan and heat-sink paired up with a peltier plate in order to also chill the liquid as it is being pumped. To make it even more interesting, he added a four key override, so the Synergizer can only be used if all four unique keys are inserted.

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Barbot Mixes Drinks Perfectly With Web Interface

December 31, 2013 by 10 Comments

barbot-with-laptop

Are you good at mixing drinks? We think this Barbot might give you a run for your money!

Not only does this Barbot have room for 5 different liquors, but you can combine them any way you want with an extremely slick web interface that you can check out for yourself.

During initial setup, you add your chosen liquors to the machine and then using the configure mode in the web interface, you tell Barbot what it has to work with. Once these fields are populated, Barbot will list various drinks that it is capable of mixing with the provided ingredients. It also has a cleaning mode, which allows you to prime the pumps and set administrative access for your parties.

The hardware behind this build is a BeagleBone Black running Ubuntu 13.04 with Apache2, MySQL, and PHP to host the web interface — bind and DHCP are used to create the web portal using a USB WiFi dongle. The online interface directly controls the pumps using PHP via the GPIOs.

To see a full demonstration stick around after the break for the included video.

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Roboxotica (Barbot Festival In Vienna)

December 13, 2013 by 9 Comments

minecraft-cocktailbot--verse-publications

Just this past week was this year’s Roboexotica 2013! The annual event was the world’s first and is perhaps the finest festival of cocktail serving robotics out there!

Founded 15 years ago in San Francisco, Roboexotica brings together scientists, hackers, and artists from all around the world to build the most awesome drink dispensing technologies. It’s also an opportunity to discuss innovation, science fiction, and the world of robotics to come — after utilizing some of the robots of course!

The photo above is of one of the popular bots from this year — it’s called the Minecraft Cocktailbot. It dispenses the liquor out of its floppy drive, but only when you control it from inside a game of Minecraft!

More of the barbots present at Roboxotica can be found on the main site. We think our second favorite is the Bunnybot. It defecates peanuts — the mightiest of all  in pellet-form bar food.

Stick around after the break to see the Minecraft Cocktailbot in action!

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Robots Of BarBot 2013

November 9, 2013 by 5 Comments

barbot

Here’s an amazing conference we really wish we could have been at — Barbot 2013: a celebration of booze serving robotic masterpieces.

Lucky for us though, the folks over at Evil Mad Scientist did have the opportunity to attend — and they took lots of pictures. There is just so much awesome it is hard to pick our favorite barbot, but the one shown above is definitely a contender. It’s the Schrödinger’s Martini. While the box is closed, the amount of vermouth poured is indeterminate until observed. Classic.

Another one that popped out at us was the 500SW, which became more affectionately known as Dance Dance Intoxication, which apparently judged you based on your dancing skills and then poured you a drink — appropriate to your moves.

Click through and see for yourself, but here’s a couple other related posts from our past, remember the Cooler Master Advanced Beer Delivery System? How about the amazing conveyor belt driven, alcohol dispensing Inebriator? There are just so many ways to have fun with the concept it’s hard not to try your hand at building one at home.