Digital Drinking Coaster

Description

We are creating an open source digital coaster that will measure how much liquid you have left in your 40 or beer. This coaster will plug into your pc and interact with your games, adding a new social stat to your online games. Now you and your friends can have a real world stat to compete over. Forget number of headshots, try number of ounces.

Details

For our prototype we are making use of 4 load cells from a digital kitchen scale, along with a PSoC for measuring the load cells and USB HID output to the computer. The load cells will be used to determine how much liquid is left in your drink. This information will then be relayed to the computer. The PSoC board will appear to be a standard HID game controller on your computer, allowing it to interact with any game that supports controllers and mods.

For our first game we will be making a mod for Killing Floor, a wave based coop survival shooter. As a coop game it's the perfect example of a game enhanced by showing who is pulling their own weight beyond just kills. We plan to have new overlay in Killing floor that shows how many ounces you have left in your drink right next to where you currently see your teammates's health and armor bars. This will let you see if your teammates are falling behind at a glance, even if they are physically across the country from you! In addition, we plan to add possible powerups, or the inability to kill the final boss, depending on how well you are doing with your drink. This adds a whole new dynamic to gameplay that's never been done before.

We call this new gametype "Killing 40's" and it is just the first of many, coming straight to your favorite games.

Components

4 × Load Cells We got these out of a digital kitchen scale. They are used to measure the weight of your 40 or beer

1 × PSoC 5LP Prototyping Kit This small board was chosen for its delsig ADC, allowing for easy measurement of the load cells, and its USB HID capabilities

1 × 40oz Whether it be a St. Ides or just a Colt 45, you're gonna need a proper drink for testing

Project Logs

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Inside the Electronics
Robert Barron • 07/11/2015 at 01:58 • 0 comments

For our first prototype we fed the output of our two load cell wheatstone bridge into the Delsig ADC of our psoc 5lp board. The white and black wires of the cells go to Power (5V) and GND, while the red wires get measured by the ADC in this configuration. The ADC supports several inputs, as well as allowing adjustment of the gain of our input, allowing us to boost the load cell output to usable levels. The first picture shows how the load cells are connected in psoc creator, while the second one shows our current ADC configuration.
Once the psoc has read the value, we convert it to a value in ounces. When the psoc is first booted up, it will be calibrated with the value of a full 40. Then the current ounce value is continuously measured. Whenever the drink is removed from the coaster, it will pause updating the value (it will measure a value below 0 ounces when you’re drinking) until the value returns to at least 0 ounces. Right now we have the output sent over serial usb to a terminal on the computer. In the future we will use HID output instead to appear as a game controller, so the coaster can work in any game.
We'll go over USB HID and the programming soon, as well as the creation of the Killing Floor game mod.
First Coaster Prototype
High Gravity Solutions • 07/10/2015 at 00:50 • 0 comments

For our first prototype, we hollowed out a block of wood to house a load cell. Then we created a top with a dowel attached that pushes down on the load cell as pressure is applied.
We got a cheap digital kitchen scale at walmart with four load cells. Each one acts as a half wheatstone bridge. Using two of them we are able to complete the bridge for a basic functioning prototype. These are then fed into the delsig adc of our psoc 5lp dev board.
Next time we'll go over the electronics design