h a l f b a k e r yWith moderate power, comes moderate responsibility.
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There's a probably a market in the bored office-worker demographic for a mug which displays on its exterior statistics relating to the owner's tea (or coffee) drinking habits. Simple accelerometers and a selection of volume, temperature and other sensors would be linked to a small processor in the base
of the mug and then to LCD displays around the outside. Example statistics might be:
- average time between sips - average temperature at which tea is drunk and current beverage temperature - steadiness of drinker's hand (using the accelerometers) - average number of cups of tea a day - total number of cups of tea this year - percentage of this cup of tea left in mug - beverage strength (based on a comparision of light levels at the top and at the deepest part of the mug) - etc., etc.
[link]
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Will it have a docking station ? Will it be able to upload stats to a host PC ? Will the high end model have Bluetooth or WiFi ? |
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[8th] I'm not sure about the docking station, but certainly some sort of communication with a server application on your PC for the heavy-duty analysis (such as that which [Ian] suggests) would be essential. Then, having got your statistics online, grouping and cross-comparision between all Stats Mug owners can be done and you would be able to see, for example, what percentile of beverage temperature you drink your tea at. |
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Mightn't this feedback-at-source mechanism encourage dangerous attempts to skew the figures? e.g. The building of tea drinking robots who "consume" a beverage at a temperature 2 (or even 3!) standard deviations from the mean, allowing for bragging rights "You see that spike at 94°, that's me that is." |
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// attempts to skew the figures // |
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No need to build robots - just hack the app on the PC and inject some false stats. |
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This is much more a user-orientated biofeedback device - giving an up-to-the-minute graphical display of the exact extent to which the ingested tannins are slowly pickling various internal organs..... |
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oye, who emptied me slops? |
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[1] I run WorkRave anti RSI software. Given a link to this, WorkRave will be able to take drinks breaks into account.
[2] I assume this is compatible with the little drinks holder thing that slides out of the front of my PC when I press the 'eject' button?
[+] |
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It'd be too embarrassing. Uhmm for some of us at least
;-) |
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[bliss] You can conceal a heavy beverage habit by using three or four mugs with different 'identities'. [po] Is that a euphemism? |
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Will this be an open or a proprietary architecture ? Will there be specialised plugins for the monitoring app for different markets ? In the UK, a biscuit-dunking monitor would be useful; percentage of tea absorbed by biscuits rather than being drunk, sludge accumulation rate, failure/breakage rate, successful "saves" of a detached, floating biscuit portion using a teaspoon or ruler ? |
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The whole thing could be linked to a Lone Worker alarm, with suitable timing tweaks; Select "Programmer" and the alarm sounds if there's more than a minute between movements, but select "lawyer", and the app only polls the mug when changing from standard to daylight saving time, or back again. |
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There could be two of them. + |
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Needs to be dishwasher safe |
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// we need a new ieee tea telemetry standard. // |
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Would that be 802.11t by any chance ? |
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hee hee [hippo] never thought of that! |
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We'd have to ask the High Tea department. |
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Well, everyone likes nice cup of tea and a pun .... |
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Could bring a whole new meaning to "Internet Café" .... |
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// Anno of the month nominee // |
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Makes a change from being [UB]'s "Anus of the month nominee" ... then again, there's a week to go yet. |
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autonomously powered by a ring of solar=cell material and/or thermo-electric thingy... I'm in [+} |
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// I have a deep and abiding respect for you // |
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I think we need to have a word with Doctor about maybe reducing your medication for once. ...... |
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