Smart Ice Cubes Tell When You've Had Enough Alcohol 167
dstates writes "In just 6 weeks an MIT researcher created smart ice cubes that monitor your drinking. After an alcohol induced blackout motivated a bit of introspection (video), Dhairya Dand pulled together a coin cell battery, an ATtiny microcontroller, and an IR transceiver molded into gelatin to create self-aware glowing ice-cubes. The cubes glow and beat to the ambient music, but more importantly, they know how fast and how much you are drinking, and they change color from green to orange to finally red as you reach your safe limit. If things go too far, the ice cubes can connect to your smartphone and send a text message for a friend come get you. Of course, you have to remember not to swallow them."
Re:Not going to work (Score:5, Interesting)
I had the exact opposite thought - I could see people buying these and having competitions for who could get their cubes to turn red the fastest.
For the inventor's intended purpose, though, I can't see a market nor much practical utility. Drinking too much isn't usually due to ignorance. People generally know they're drinking too much - it's either an intentional choice or behavior being driven by addiction.
Re:Not going to work (Score:3, Interesting)
People already have lots of warnings that they have too much to drink. First, if you drink six drinks in one bar, you probably had too much. If you are slurring your words, you probably had to much. If your friends say you had too much, you probably had too much. These smart ice-cubes will not help because it is a problem of impaired judgement, not a problem of impaired measuring ability. After a few drinks I bet most people will just put the cubes in their pocket and ignore them.
This will let people know which girls are the drunkest. I wonder if that is a bug or a feature...