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Another Beer Please
jmichaelg writes "What do you get when you combine a glass, a PIC computer, two capacitors, a coil and a zener Diode? A wireless beer glass that signals your waiter when you need a refill. The circuit is an RFID transponder that measures the fluid level in a glass and transmits a globally unique ID coupled to the fluid level reading when queried by an antenna hidden in your table. The query provides enough power to drive the circuit so no batteries are needed. A technical paper describes the circuitry in the table and the glass." This hit the news over a year ago, but we didn't have the technical details.
Some use for RFIDs that doesn't lead to a police state! Only more beer for all! Horray for bread & circuses!
You don't want another drink, but your glass/table has ordered you another one, and teh waiter brings it over???
and then proceeds to add the drink to the bill even though you didn't drink it, but you did order it.?
Is it REALLY that hard to just walk around and look at peoples' glasses?
Yes, ideally, someday, we can all just lay around half conscious, being tended to by robots. It'll be great, because robots are NEAT!
I think it's good to be a bit of a luddite.
Also kind of throws the "Responsible service Of Alcohol" policy that we have in Australia.
How is the glass going to know how drunk the person is, and if they should be seerved any more alcohol?
RFID tags are only as evil as those who use them. Just because your beer glass has an RFID tag in it does NOT mean you need a tin-foil hat to go to the bar.
You know, you coudl complain just as much about 802.11 and Bluetooth, because they can be used in similar ways with a little effort.
Monitor the general vicinity of your laptop? Record what store security systems your PDA enters? Hell, triangulate your cel phone signal (and now GPS it), a wireless electronic item quite personally associated with you by a corporate entity, nonetheless.
Please TFY next time. That's "Think For Yourself", and I think it should become as popular as "IANAL" and "RTFA" here on "/."
(Sorry if this was a joke, but the first thing I thought of when I read this article is "Great, another RFID bitchfest")
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Not sure if this is just a Banks' (Midlands-based brewery) thing or if it's law, but staff in Banks' pubs are trained to give you a fresh glass each time, never refill on health&safety grounds.
I'd be willing to bet you would have to wait just as long for a refil, since your waiter is most likely responsible for more than just your empty beer glass. The wait time is not due to not noticing, it is due to being in a queue.
A friend of mine is a bartender. It takes me forever to get a refill if his bar is busy, because he knows I'm not going to get mad at him if I have to wait an extra five minutes to get a drink. (and of course, I will be understanding of the extra wait time because an entire evening of drinking costs me $20 with an included $12 tip)
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Squirrel
Mmm... drunks making asses of themselves, starting fights and driving intoxicated.
Gotta love pop culture nowadays, about the most noble things you can do are get drunk and have casual unprotected sex.
And who would want the damn thing to order another beer when you've had enough? Perhaps this guy should go and get a life (or at least a job).
Mitsubishi has created something here that would make for a totally cool geek's page and a really neat thing to find in a few offbeat pubs. Nothing wrong with Mitsubishi patenting such an invention, but the problem is that this thing is destined for the conglomerate-sized markets only. You are not going to find this in a place with any kind of unique character to it, you're only going to find it in yellow and orange plastic-table megarestaurant chains. You'll only see it in the kinds of places where turnover is high and the waitresses have to wear a certain amount of "flair", because those are the only places that will be able to afford ordering 180 of these systems to place in their eastern seaboard chain. In these kinds of places, it's going to be about as cool as the LED reader boards in the drive-through that show you what the teenager on the other side of the inaudible squawk box has punched in to the register. Wireless empty glass detectors and LED reader boards to reduce screwing up your order are alright, but they often seem to wind up being applied to things that have suckage at their cores.
The second problem is having them care, which as you point out, is better solved with low-tech. If the waitstaff doesn't know you (e.g. hopefully just doesn't realize you tip well), it's usually better to pay in cash and tip for each round. At least in the US, a lot of people who run a tab on a card suck at calculating proper tips, and usually skimp.
I've never had a hard time getting timely drinks at places I drank often. But then, I understand that my waiter or waitress depends on me and the other customers to provide them a proper salary for the quality of their service.
I write code.