I’ll pitch 10. Immortalize my beautiful name!
Good news everyone!
I got us a watercooler - a free one at that. Thanks to all you guys who volunteered your hard earned cash. I put it next to the MAME cabinet. The hot and cold water both work. The cold tap is kind of broken - if someone could 3D print it a new handle, that would be most excellent.
I ended up cleaning it with a chlorinated powder (same stuff I use for brewing) for both the external and the plastic parts inside. I then flushed the system a couple times with fresh water. The cold and room-temp water tasted fine, but the hot water had a chlorine taste.
I have since flushed the system again with 5 gallons of baking soda solution. I ran out of both time and water to flush it again with fresh water to get rid of the baking soda. I’ve put a sign onto the machine saying that it needs to be flushed out with fresh water before use.
What needs to be done
- Flush machine with fresh water
- Take the 4 water bottles from the top of the vending machine for a deposit - they are unfit for drinking from!
- Build a contraption to refill water bottles (funnel and hose should suffice)
- Fix the cold water tap
- Test the hot water tap for taste again
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I’ll bring down a funnel and hose today after work to make said contraption. This should allow me to fill a bottle and finish the flushing of the machine.
The machine is totall hackable as long as you don’t introduce bad tastes and/or heavy-metals into the water. Painting over the ugly off-white plastic is encouraged, adding LEDs is also encouraged (can’t have too many of them). A water gauge to tweet that the hackers have consumed 6728.74 gallons of water since inception of the machine would also work.
That being said, it would be ideal if kool-aid powder and other sugary stuff was NOT put into the machine, it might gum it up requiring more cleaning.
Also, try not to hack the hose/funnel by pouring anything but drinkable water in it. I’ll make sure to label it to deter hackers looking to use it to consolidate their used etching fluid into a bottle for proper disposal 
. In the base of the machine is a small compartment - it is actually a small refrigerator I think, but the host hose could go there.
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Awesome work, thanks Logan
After much deliberation, i’m fairly certain that even @TyIsI’s scrawny butt win’t fit in there, let alone any other host.
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I look at the water fountain and I see marvin’s head.
Every drink deserves a remainder from Marvin.
I will take a look this weekend and suggest some ideas how to detect drinks
and water level, temperature hot and cold side.
I guess a reminder from Bender to close the suicide booth door after your
done, Might be more suiting.
Looking for Bender suicide booth quotes
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@tyisi - a use for the old Marvin door hanger! could tie into water level
or a microswitch at each tap level to detect number of dispenses and
current “storing/dispensing” state as well
I think easiest way is a capacitive sensor. Water is a great dielectric (constant ~70 IIRC). A fringe field sensor tacked to the side of the bottle and a LUT mapping capacitance to water level would suffice. The difficulty would be making it not annoying when swapping bottles.
a couple hall none contact sensors in the handles, might be the easiest way
to detect the taps.
The hall sensors can be calibrated to measure how much the tap is turned
on.
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perhaps a water bottle sock, “puppet”
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Like this?
ya, perhaps, I was thinking a bender head might be the right shape.
With the rest of the cooler making the body.
Watch me, poor man!
Alright. Watercooler is up and running now with help from @Lukeo. I will make up some sheets that we can put on the cooler and bottles to track when they have been last cleaned out so that we can avoid unintentionally bio-hacking. I understand that is frowned upon.
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