What happens when a company that focuses on integrating texting into existing business phone numbers decides to try its hand at robotics? In Zipwhip’s case at least, the result is “the Texterator, a machine that gets you a beer when you text it.” Geekwire’s article continues that “Maybe the days of struggling to get a bartender’s attention are finally behind us.”
Though not struggling to get a drink at a popular bar may be many years away, it looks like it was quite a success at Geekwire’s anniversary party. The device takes the form of a rotary table, reminiscent of industrial automation equipment, to position and lift the cups for a perfect pour. At the next dial position, a 1W 450nm wavelength laser is used to engrave each cup with the last four digits of the ordering phone number so everyone knows which beer belongs to each person. Finally, once an attendee claimed a beer from the serving tray, the Texterator snapped a selfie and messaged them the picture.
If you’d like to make your own beer bot, the code is available on GitHub. For control, it uses several TinyG boards (available from Adafruit and elsewhere) to control each part of the device. Featuring an ATxmega192 chip, at first glance these control boards may seem like overkill. However, as seen at 0:14 in the video above, the cup-lifting mechanism moves the red Solo cup for engraving, requiring some rather advanced motion control!