Linux fridge rats on your drinking habits

A BLOKE has invented a Linux fridge that will tell you who has been drinking your beer and post it to a web page.

Mike Wakerly has designed his Robotic Kegerator so that it will estimate the drinker's blood alcohol level and post it so that Inspector Knacker of the Yard can finger your collar if you go driving.

It can log the drinker's nightly consumption and cut off the supply if it feels you have had a bit too much.

On the plus side, The Kegbot can even send you a text message when the beer supply runs low and make sure you order some more while you are at the shops.

Wakerly, has built a microcontroller that directs a valve and a flow meter, and spliced both into the tap line of an everyday keg fridge. Then he wrote custom software for an attached Linux computer that can look up drinkers in a database and post their pour total to the Web.

According to Kegbot, each approved drinker gets a digital ID button with a unique 64-bit code. You need this to pour a drink.

A microcontroller reads the code and sends it to the Linux computer, which matches it to your entry in the database and checks any restrictions on your drinking.

Sheesh if you can't trust yourself to monitor your own drinking you have a problem that no operating system can cure. µ

L'INQ
Here, with a picture