Adafruit’s Tony DiCola has created a smart cocktail shaker capable of dispensing classy drinks with nothing less than accurate precision.
“The smart cocktail shaker is a project to help you easily mix drinks using an Arduino, a load cell from a cheap kitchen scale and an Android application,” DiCola explained in a detailed Adafruit tutorial.
“By measuring the weight of a cocktail shaker, an Arduino can send the amount of poured liquid to an Android application over a USB or bluetooth connection in real time. Making a drink is as easy as following the steps on screen – no more guessing or fumbling with measurements.”
As HackADay’s Brian Benchoff notes, DiCola connected a INA125 instrument amplifier to the load cell, instead of trying to interface with the electronics in the scale.
“[Meanwhile] an [Atmel-based] Arduino Micro (ATmega32u4) measures the weight on the load cell… With the known densities of gin, vermouth and Kahlua, Tony can get a very good idea of how much liquid is in the cocktail shaker.”
On the software side, Tony wrote an Android app for his tablet that communicates with the Arduino via Adafruit’s Bluefruit adapter.
“The app receives the current weight on the load cell, displays the current amount of liquor in the cocktail shaker and provides step-by-step instructions for making any cocktail,” Benchoff added.
Interested in learning more? You can check out Adafruit’s detailed build tutorial here.
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