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Smart Ice Cubes Tell When You've Had Enough Alcohol

Posted by samzenpus on from the slow-down dept.

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."

5 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Not going to work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People already have lots of warnings that they have too much to drink. First, if you drink six drinks in one bar, you probably had too much. If you are slurring your words, you probably had to much. If your friends say you had too much, you probably had too much. These smart ice-cubes will not help because it is a problem of impaired judgement, not a problem of impaired measuring ability. After a few drinks I bet most people will just put the cubes in their pocket and ignore them.

  2. Or, you could not drink yourself into Oblivion by CodeheadUK · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously, is it that hard to drink and have a good time without pouring crap down your neck till you're shitfaced, grand slam the bed and wake up next to something that needs to be kept wet until it can be rolled back into the ocean?

    Spend hours building a smart ice cube, or thinking, "Hmm the room is spinning, I feel a bit grim and that -2 over there is looking like a 10, I'll ease up a bit". Which is the 'Smart' idea?

  3. Your solving the wrong problem by Osgeld · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What this summary misses is that the blackout sent the dude to the hospital, and not even 3 weeks later he is drinking it up at a party again. Thats a problem blinky ice cubes wont solve

    http://hackaday.com/2013/01/09/led-ice-cubes-prevent-alcohol-induced-blackouts/

  4. Re:What happens ... by backslashdot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe they should have designed these features into the cup rather than something that drops in the alcohol. THe cup can probably do more sensory related stuff.

  5. Re:Nerd creates solution in search of a problem... by arth1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about you say, the cubes are not for every conceivable situation. But only for drinking beer out of a mug; fairly consistent levels of alcohol between beers. No straws.

    Who the hell drinks beer from a mug out of a straw?

    Who the hell drinks beer with ice cubes?