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August 17, 2010 9:46 AM   Subscribe

John Billes—whose extracurricular exploits as an undergraduate at UT Austin brought us iPhone-controlled dance floor lights, R/C cars, and yes, even full-size automobiles—has created the KegMatea keg-mounted, Arduino-controlled data-logging suite with an iPad-based user interface—in his spare time, while working at Yelp.
posted by defenestration (8 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Someday the world will be filled with cheap ipad-like devices. My own personal dream is one mounted on the fridge that gives temp stats, but also has a list of what is contained within and informs you when perishables are about to go bad. Once you use something up, it would generate a shopping list and send it to your phone. I'm tired of finding month-old cabbage in the back of the fridge...
posted by melissam at 10:35 AM on August 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


St. Bernardus!
posted by PugAchev at 10:45 AM on August 17, 2010


Hooray for the Ipad! It makes every old programming chestnut new again!

Lawn, get off, &tc.
posted by benzenedream at 10:49 AM on August 17, 2010 [2 favorites]


Melissan, it already exists.
posted by Midnight Rambler at 11:21 AM on August 17, 2010


A friend of mine built a robot that monitored the levels of cheese and petrol, but it didn't work out so well.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:41 AM on August 17, 2010 [2 favorites]


Mod note: Bunch of comments removed. Please do not make threads into arguments about who does or does not read which other sites on the internet.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:23 PM on August 17, 2010


It's pretty awesome, although I think using an iPad for the user interface is wasteful and overkill. It makes it fairly impractical for most people to implement themselves, which is kind of a bummer. An old laptop plus a disassembled keyboard would have done the job and been much easier to replicate; requiring the dedicated (at least while it's in operation) use of and risk to a $500+ device seems like a poor engineering choice.

Though I do love the Arduino, I suspect there are inexpensive x86 SoCs, or even routers with upgradable software, that could provide the same thing as a web service (as Burhnistan suggests), and even double as a hotspot, for far less than an iPad.

The real trick would be eliminating the need for RFID cards to "swipe" in. Nothing particularly elegant comes to mind. I guess you could put some sort of barcode reader or camera on the keg, and then write a web app that generates a barcode that you display on your mobile device and show to the sensor (like the electronic-ticketing systems used by some airlines now). It wouldn't be as user-transparent as RFID, though.
posted by Kadin2048 at 3:01 PM on August 17, 2010


I saw this on Make earlier today and spent probably a full minute trying to figure out what the UI was supposed to be showing me. Never did get it, although I did eventually puzzle out that it was somehow beer-related.
posted by DU at 3:58 PM on August 17, 2010


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