Automatic Bar Butler

Inspiration

The Teknic Clear Pour is a super cool invention and surely is a crowd-pleaser, but is too large and clunky to actually be viable for non-enterprise use. Teknic ClearPour Video
So we wanted to simplify it into a more consumer-friendly version.

What it does

It takes the Teknic ClearPour and miniaturizes it into an abbreviated consumer-friendly version capable of holding 6 standard 750ml bottles of mixer/liquor for drinks.

How we envisioned it built

We built it using a 2-axis model where one axis is rotational for the bar butler itself, and the second axis is linear for the actuation of the glass into the bottle valves. These systems work seamlessly together thanks to the Teknic ClearCore microcontroller and are all interfaced by users via the third-party touchscreen, when complete.

What's actually built

All of the backend code to make drinks and actuate the motors is there and functional but sadly we're missing a power cord for the linear actuator motor and we need improvements to the drink platform for stability. The only thing software wise that we couldn't get working was the touchscreen.

Challenges we ran into

Getting all our axis together in a solid enough format to spin bottles and properly and hold the glass for the drinks was definitely the most difficult. The second most difficult was getting the touchscreen display to properly display buttons and update the interface.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of this whole thing, hardware hacks are notoriously difficult for the reason of needing to build not just a fully functioning software but also a fully functioning hardware to communicate with said software and vice versa.