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.-- hippo, Aug 17 2009 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 ?-- 8th of 7, Aug 17 2009 [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.-- hippo, Aug 17 2009 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."-- zen_tom, Aug 17 2009 // attempts to skew the figures //
No need to build robots - just hack the app on the PC and inject some false stats.
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.....-- 8th of 7, Aug 17 2009 oye, who emptied me slops?-- po, Aug 17 2009 [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? [+]-- RattyBunyip, Aug 17 2009 It'd be too embarrassing. Uhmm for some of us at least ;-)-- blissmiss, Aug 17 2009 [bliss] You can conceal a heavy beverage habit by using three or four mugs with different 'identities'.[po] Is that a euphemism?-- hippo, Aug 17 2009 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 ?
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.-- 8th of 7, Aug 17 2009 There could be two of them. +-- csea, Aug 17 2009 +
Needs to be dishwasher safe-- DenholmRicshaw, Aug 17 2009 // we need a new ieee tea telemetry standard. //
[marked-for-tagline]
Would that be 802.11t by any chance ?-- 8th of 7, Aug 17 2009 hee hee [hippo] never thought of that!-- po, Aug 17 2009 WiMaxwell House?-- Jinbish, Aug 17 2009 We'd have to ask the High Tea department.-- coprocephalous, Aug 17 2009 Well, everyone likes nice cup of tea and a pun ....
Could bring a whole new meaning to "Internet Café" ....
// Anno of the month nominee //
Makes a change from being [UB]'s "Anus of the month nominee" ... then again, there's a week to go yet.-- 8th of 7, Aug 17 2009 autonomously powered by a ring of solar=cell material and/or thermo-electric thingy... I'm in [+}-- FlyingToaster, Aug 17 2009 // I have a deep and abiding respect for you //
I think we need to have a word with Doctor about maybe reducing your medication for once. ......-- 8th of 7, Aug 17 2009 random, halfbakery