coffee intake automonitor

Sometimes I drink too much coffee. Not as often as I used to, but it still happens. I always kick off my day with a cup. Cafetiere (french press) coffee, freshly made. If I start my day too early, and say ‘yeah why not’ a couple of extra times during the morning I can easily hit 5 or 6 cups by noon. Bad news.

I need help to cut down. The basic idea is as follows:

Attach an RFID to your Cafetiere. Install a proximity reader in the kitchen. Every time the cafetiere comes into range PING! that’s another cup of coffee. The proximity reader sends a message to the ‘watchyourcaffiene.com‘ website - ran by the people who sold you the rfid kit.

coffee2.jpg

Obviously the rfid reader would have to look cool, or be small enough to hide behind the kettle. A glowing coffee bean would be nice. With a tiny led growing deep inside its resiny shell. Or coffee makers could partner with watchyourcaffiene.com to sell units with built in monitors.

You can see your profile online, you can let other people see your profile online (sig. other for example). You can set alerts to hit your Phone / Twitter / Jaiku when you exceed your limit - or when the cafetiere enters the kitchen just as you are ABOUT to hit your limit. You are reaching for the kettle and suddenly “I’m sorry dave, you can’t have another cup”.

kitchen.jpg

Taking this a step further, an RFID in your cup would track your personal consumption if you shared a cafetiere. If you had two cups you could have a Coffee and a Green Tea cup. Try to keep them in balance! “turn it into a game” as Seymour would say. You are reaching for the kettle and suddenly “I’m sorry dave, green tea this time”.

The company could milk the cash by offering smaller cups - which count less. If you were allowed 2 mugs a day, that could be 4 cups, or 6 minicups. They could sell you a mug, then when you drink more than 2 a day along with the “I’m sorry Dave…” message could suggest you buy a smaller cup.

Another revenue earner could be a SMS reply to the “Sorry Dave…” message saying “I’m having a decaff” or “I spilled it - honest” to lower your daily count. (btw did you know the caff from decaff goes into soft drinks - I never thought about where soft drink caffeine came from)

I like my current coffee cup though, so they would have to sell an add on monitor. This would actually look quite cool as a big tag for the handle - like when things in supermarkets are tagged with huge lumps of plastic to set off the alarms. A public symbol of your dependency. And they’d have to be dishwasher safe. A sophisticated mini sticker for underneath the cup would also work - more subtle.
And of course the league table of coffee drinkers could allow caffeine heads to show off their intake. “Dude I had like 3 mugs and 7 espresso cups this morning“. Blog chicklets to let you post your current daily and weekly count would promote the site.

coffee.jpg

August 21, 2007 | Filed Under , ,

 

Comments

Leave a Reply