Mobile Cocktail Mixer - Punica
The Name (Punica)
For a long time, we just couldn't find a name for our project,
but then, one day we were searching for something we could use for ingredients storage,
and we choose 'Punica' bottles because they were big enough to put the pumps inside.
Oh man, that day we performed our first test-runs, we just drank such an enormous amount
of Punica that we decided to name our cocktail mixer 'Punica'! And what a coincidence that
this abbreviation fits just perfectly:
Punica == Portable UNIversal Cocktail Assembler ;-)
About Us
We, Chris, Freed, Marek, Moritz and Weissi, are five 17/18-year old guys from Freiburg
(Baden-Württemberg) in Germany where we are going to school.
Story
On January 10th, we saw a story on Slashdot.org: Linux-Based
Bar-Monkey. We read it and thought "Hey, that's a really cool idea", but the problem
was: there were no plans, no sourcecode and it was definitely too big!
So, we decided
to build our own Mobile Cocktail Mixer.
Pictures
Please click here to see some
pictures of Punica.
Technical details
- Size: 40cm * 70cm * 40cm !
- Punica is running a Debian Linux
- The software for mixing the drinks is MixIt, it's part of the Punica
project and open source (released as GPL v2)
- Our own Punica-device is powered by a 40MHz Intel i486 CPU with 16MiB RAM
- (at present) It has 14 pumps for ingrendients
- (at present) It uses two relay cards (8 ports each) for switching the pumps on/off
- It can be controlled via normal tv IR remotes
Price
Main cost:
- 2 8-port relay cards at 32EUR each
- 14 pumps at 12EUR each
- alu box for 78EUR
- computer was sponsored
All in all: 400EUR
Additional planned features
- ethernet card and web frontend for easy configuration of Punica
- optional screen interface, if someone doesn't like tv remotes
Plans, sourcecode?
- Most source(MixIt, the software mixing everying together) is available at
http://mixit.sourceforge.net/, the
rest will be release as soon as possible
- Plans will be available as soon as we've digitised them
Questions, Proposals?
Please email to punica@tux4u.de
Special thanks to
- Moritz' parents for letting us build Punica in their entire(!) house
- Janosch for perfectly soldering especially our relay cards
- Sebastian for correcting our English
- Many others for giving technical advice
- Zeljko M. Markic for hosting the pictures (http://www.tipleague.com)