Some say that technology has turned us into a bunch of lazy people, but I say if things can be made easier, why not give it a try? I stumbled upon a really cool video which shows how you can instruct your coffee maker to brew you a pot of nice hot coffee with a single tweet. Now, people who are continuously on Twitter will certainly feel the excitement that I felt when I first read about the hack. If you are not into Twitter (how can you not be?), then you might think this silly. But, hey, being silly on a Sunday morning is allowed! 😉
So, how does this thing work? You’ll need a little bit of knowledge – both about hardware and software. The things you will need are a coffee maker, a computer, a Twitter account, a mobile phone, and Arduino. Okay, I have to admit that it doesn’t look like the average joe will be able to pull it off, so I will stick to the concepts instead of the specific instructions on how to set it up.
The idea is to hook up the coffee maker to a computer, which will serve as the switch (albeit a complicated one) to turn the coffee maker on. If you do things right, you can simply send a tweet and the coffee maker will have your coffee ready when you want.
Hooking up household appliances to Twitter is not a new idea. A couple of years ago, some guy had too much time on his hands and hooked up his washing machine, toilet, and toaster to Twitter. Pretty soon, tweets from the threesome were flying from the guy’s house, through Twitter’s data service centers, to countless people’s Twitter accounts.
The latter “experiment” is a bit less useful than this coffee maker project, but it is no less cool, is it? Then again, cool and fun is one thing. I would much rather have a coffee maker that will not require me having to clean it and fill it with water and coffee grounds – on top of not having to switch it on. (Who said something about being lazy?)
If you still want to give Tweet-a-Pot a try, though, here’s the video. You’ll at least have a kick out of watching it.
Originally posted on January 23, 2011 @ 5:51 am