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Smart Ice Cubes Tell When You've Had Enough Alcohol
dstates writes "In just 6 weeks an MIT researcher created smart ice cubes that monitor your drinking. After an alcohol induced blackout motivated a bit of introspection (video), Dhairya Dand pulled together a coin cell battery, an ATtiny microcontroller, and an IR transceiver molded into gelatin to create self-aware glowing ice-cubes. The cubes glow and beat to the ambient music, but more importantly, they know how fast and how much you are drinking, and they change color from green to orange to finally red as you reach your safe limit. If things go too far, the ice cubes can connect to your smartphone and send a text message for a friend come get you. Of course, you have to remember not to swallow them."
...you've had enough. I don't think this is exactly news.
First of all people are looking at this negatively. Given 3 women roughly all of the same 1-10 scale, you try to pick up the drunk one by finding the one with flashing red alert ice cubes first. Or going the other way, an ugly woman can find a cute guy with the highest intensity beer googles by looking for the ice cubes flashing red alert. Lastly college students are going to use "alerting ice cubes" for drinking games, not a preventative measure, like whom ever's ice cubes flash red first, wins!
Secondly, if you're feeling sober-ish and drinking at a bar and then suddenly pass out and wake up in some weirdo's bed or minus one kidney, the problem is not booze and the solution is not wiimotes in icecubes, the problem is someone paid the bartender to slip a pill in ur drink. I was hoping for an embedded EtOH sensor and/or a whole "GC on a chip" sensor unit, not a lame accelerometer.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I tried them and it works. Halfway through my first drink, the bartender saw them, dragged me outside, and beat the shit out of me. I had to go to the hospital, but at least it wasn't due to alcohol poisoning!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
When it comes to drinking there ARE all sorts of excuses!
My favorite was always:
"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Finally an automated version of my wife at parties: cold and keeping track of my drinking.
"Moderate drinking is harmless, even in large quantities." - Antoni Slonimski