When you put your steaming mug of coffee next to your computer, just plug it into a spare USB cable. Power from the USB will feed elements embedded in the mug to keep the coffee to the precise temperature or cooling gradient specified in your computer's coffee monitoring application (iCoffee™ if you're using a Mac). Sensors will also feed back on the USB the current temperature of the coffee so it can be displayed as a little icon (Lots of steam/ A wisp of steam/ No steam/ An iceberg) next to the clock on the taskbar/ menubar.-- hippo, Jan 28 2003 Pentium Oven http://www.halfbake...0Easy_20Bake_20OvenStick your cup in here. Oven gloves supplied seperately. [DrBob, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004] Google Search for "Mug Warmer" http://www.google.c...&btnG=Google+SearchI've chased a few of the devices back to the manufacturer sites, but none list the power requirements. [st3f]ADB Coffee Warmer (TidBITS MacHack report) http://www.tidbits....dBITS-135.html#lnk3Half-baked as joke application for Mac. Intriguing, but I'm not having any luck Googling for any further detail. [st3f, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] ADB Coffee Warmer (TidBITS MacHack report) http://www.tidbits....dBITS-135.html#lnk3Half-baked as joke application for Mac. Intriguing, but I'm not having any luck Googling for any further detail. [JKew, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004] (?) netwarmer1.0d1 http://mac-archive..../util/organization/Software for the above hack? (Search in page to find it.) [JKew, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] (?) PC Info: CPU Cooling http://www.pcinfoco...hill/cpucooling.aspSource of figure in my note. [kropotkin, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] (?) Baked! http://www.dct-net....pecial/usb_hot.html [JKew, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] (?) "'ll take mine with milk, no sugar, thanks" http://www.antipope...2003/Feb/27#toys-22Credit where credit's due: Charlie Stross's weblog. [JKew, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] (?) Trojan room coffee pot http://directory.go...offee_Machine,_The/First webcam [OnionBread, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] (?) usb toothbrush?? http://gizmodo.net/...s/001308.php#001308 [thejini, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] USB Fan for laptops http://www.thinkgee...g/accessories/5dee/Certainly seems plausible, given the existance of this. [gisho, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] (?) USB coffee warmer http://www.newmotio...ssory/cupwarmer.htmWrap that around your mug and warm it. [galukalock, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] Nice try hippo, but there isn't enough power in USB to do this.
(and didn't we already do a hi-tech coffee mug... goes off to look... can't find it... but I did find some heat cubes... goes back over to the coffee stones idea.)-- st3f, Jan 28 2003 A special external USB hub with a huxter power supply should do it.-- bristolz, Jan 28 2003 And the mug can rest, ever so precariously, on the custom mug shelf *ahem* I mean CD tray.-- Jinbish, Jan 28 2003 Are you sure there's not enough power, [st3f]? It's not like it has to heat the coffee, just keep if from cooling so rapidly (and measure the temperature for your desktop coffee-monitoring app). USB can power a scanner quite happily so it must be able to generate a little bit of heat.-- hippo, Jan 28 2003 From a quick google, I think that USB max power is 2.5W. No idea what bristolz' huxter dooberry is, though.-- st3f, Jan 28 2003 Well, I don't either.-- bristolz, Jan 28 2003 Surely "Firewire" would be the thing for this application ?
If the current from the USB were used to drive a Peltier-effect heat pump plate it could selectively heat or cool the coffee according to the user requirements. Also, you would be able to check on your coffee over the network. The coffee percolator could monitor the states of engineer's coffee mug', and predict demand surges.
So many benefits ..... and yet I'm sure someone, somewhere, will find a way to use this technology for evil. Actually, I'm going to make a start right now ....-- 8th of 7, Jan 28 2003 Some kind of heat exchanger between your processor and your beverage may be in order...-- Zircon, Jan 28 2003 // Nice try hippo, but there isn't enough power in USB to do this. //
500mA @ 5V = 2.5W.
My back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that 2.5W is sufficient to raise 300ml of water by ~11 degrees Kelvin an hour -- ignoring any cooling losses and ignoring the mass and heat capacity of the mug.
Flipping it around, this suggests that a USB port is capable of maintaining the temperature of 300ml of water which would otherwise cool by 11 degrees an hour.
That doesn't seem enough to me: my mug of tea goes from just-poured to stone cold in an hour.
// A special external USB hub with a huxter power supply should do it. //
But then you may as well have a special USB-equipped coffee-warmer device with it's own power supply.-- JKew, Jan 28 2003 A java app I presume?-- Shz, Jan 28 2003 // surely porwerful enough to keep a well insulated coffee mug at above about 80C//
It depends on the surface area for cooling. If the mug was a vacuum mug, and had a narrow neck (thus, small surface area) losses could be minimised. Less power is required to acheive equilibrium at any given target temperature.
[Shz] You should be ashamed of yourself.......-- 8th of 7, Jan 28 2003 I don't care whether there's enough power or not; if it can be done with USB, I'm all for it. If it can't, well, I don't drink much coffee anyway...-- galukalock, Jan 28 2003 // a well insulated coffee mug //
I suspect if my tea mug was well-insulated it wouldn't go cold before I drink it -- certainly my teapot stays warm a surprisingly long time in its knitted cosy. I must look into these thermos mugs...
Another low-tech solution would be to set a "remember to drink your tea" alarm for 10 minutes from now when you return to your PC with your freshly-brewed cuppa.
I quite like the idea of all of us on our tea round having networked tea-warmers, though: that'd make for a nice unobtrusive groupware app which could send me an email when we all run empty and/or low and it's my turn to brew up.-- JKew, Jan 28 2003 // Google Search for "Mug Warmer" //
*boggle* I had no idea there _was_ such a thing as an electric mug warmer. They don't seem to exist in the UK.-- JKew, Jan 28 2003 Apparently a 2GHz Pentium 4 dissipates 90 W of heat: that should be more than enough to keep your coffee warm. Ignoring heat loss, that could boil 300 ml of coffee in under 12 minutes.-- kropotkin, Jan 28 2003 //[Shz] You should be ashamed of yourself.......//
Sadly, I’m not. The coffee tastes a bit too much like the flavor they used to serve at Motorola. Doesn’t taste burnt or fishy though, ‘cause it’s locally monitored and regulated.-- Shz, Jan 28 2003 All the croissants in all the coffee shopsin the world wouldn't be enough for this idea. ok it probably wouldbe, but its still good.-- notme, Jan 28 2003 While thinking about warming a cup of coffee with a Palm Pilot, and presumably draining the batteries, I got to thinking that maybe we should be powering the computer off the heat in a cup of coffee.-- DrCurry, Jan 29 2003 Dr Curry: You could use some sort of Stirling Engine (which generates energy by heat differences) dipped in your coffee to run your palm pilot. I've no idea how much power you'd get out of it.
The efficiency of this solution isn't that great, however: owing to evil thermodynamic-type principles, you're far better off using the electricity you use to heat the coffee to run your computer rather than having the intermediate step.-- kropotkin, Jan 29 2003 If you're stuck in the jungle, hot coffee may be easier to come by than electricity. (Though probably not a whole lot easier.)-- DrCurry, Jan 29 2003 Charlie Stross's weblog [link] linked to a Japanese manufacturer [link] which appears to bake this idea precisely.
*boggle*-- JKew, Feb 28 2003 A little tangential, maybe, but this (link)is the story of the Trojan Room Coffee Pot. Possibly the most famous coffee pot in the world: pivotal in the history of the WWW, seen by over 2 million people, has its own Google directory entry, and was sold for over £3,000. (Honest!, the date is just a co-incidence.)-- OnionBread, Apr 01 2003 //If you're stuck in the jungle, hot coffee may be easier to come by than electricity.//
i'm not sure i agree. i think electricity is a more common natural occurence than hot coffee. lightning occurs all the time, but seldom do we see mugs of spontaneously hot coffee falling from the sky.
or, to put it in a different light, if you're stuck in the jungle (with your hot cup of coffee), why would you want to power your palm pilot with it?-- urbanmatador, Apr 25 2003 Here's one for you. There seems to already be a USB mug available. The address is: http://www.dct-net.co.jp/special/usb_hot.html
Hehe.. guess you could improve on it though.. like by adding temperature monitoring, the ability to remotely hack someone's mug to make it really cold, or add a small 16-bit audio processor to it so that people can talk to you over the Internet such that people could say you're talking to your mug. Or for something less complicated your could just set your Linux box to send audio to it every couple minutes like every three or so minutes your mug burps at you, says "ahhh," or something along those lines. Hrm.. you could also give your usb mug some special material that can display graphics and you could change the "skin" of your mug through your USB port. Further, you could add 256 megs of flash memory to your mug so that you can use your mug as a portable hard drive. Ahh.. all the things to do with a mug.. but lets not forget the drinking of the coffee. MmmMMmm.-- wsbg, Jun 11 2003 A little different perhaps, but you could put all of the memory chips into the base of a coffee warmer. Now the computer has a place to dump waste heat – your cup of coffee. Of course, the computer will function erratically unless you keep it supplied with Starbucks.-- ldischler, Jun 11 2003 //dump waste heat// My laptop gets uncomfortably hot when I actually sit it on my lap. But maybe I could incubate eggs with it?-- pluterday, Jun 11 2003 Wired. I like it. Can you make a wireless model for decaf? I really want the one in JKew's link. I'm jelous of the Japanese - they seem to generally have a halfbaking-friendly society.-- Worldgineer, Jun 11 2003 I have found one. Its in a catalog that we get at my office. Not an actual mug, but it does the job. It is a warming plate that plugs into your USB port, and keeps liquid nice and toasty.-- ndr, Jul 22 2003 If you have a water-cooling system in your PC then you could link the output from the processor water block to a hotplate that could possibly heat a cup of coffee if the processor is putting out enough heat.-- Black Bunny, Aug 10 2003 this is no less than genious. maybe you could have a coffee cooling system instead of water for your processor. if your coffee actually gets cold from not drinking it, you pour it into the coffee cooling cycle which cools the processor and heats your coffee once more!-- bratch, Aug 10 2003 I am assuming that the desktop monitoring application would have to be made in java. Ba-ZING!-- themadcreator, Aug 11 2003 [shz] got to it first, Creator.-- motive power, Aug 11 2003 i saw a usb mug in a magazine once-- phlegm, Oct 27 2003 Will run also with a cola on summer?-- eugenio, Feb 19 2004 awsome-- krod, Feb 29 2004 This is clearly baked, but nice idea.
" Another low-tech solution would be to set a "remember to drink your tea" alarm for 10 minutes from now when you return to your PC with your freshly-brewed cuppa."
Oddly enough, Mandrake Linux comes with a program called "Tea" in which you set yout type of tea and it tells you when it is done brewing, it also can be used as a timer though.-- thelambs, Feb 29 2004 This is cool. I don't drink coffee, but I just might start if I had one of these!-- bspollard, May 27 2004 random, halfbakery