So you have you beer fridge. It’s great and does the job. However, what if we could make this hunk of a chilling appliance into something smart? Well, you totally can. Get this—you can make your compact refrigerator so smart it will tell you the amount of bottles are stored in it, how many cold ones you chugged, and the time you drank ‘em.
All you need is a Wii Balance Board and Raspberry Pi.
The Wii Balance board is perfect to use as a sale to weigh the bottles and mini refrigerator. Using math via your Raspberry Pi, you can figure out how many bottles are in the refrigerator by their weight.
Plus, the board uses Bluetooth—so add a Bluetooth adapter to your Pi to communicate with the board, and you’re on your way to being the beer king or queen of your smart fridge.
If you’re feeling a little more creative, you can even take a picture of someone anytime your refrigerator door is open using the Raspberry Pi’s camera module. Seriously? Seriously. How awesome is that!
Jamie Bailey, a systems engineer, posted his project steps over at Make. He covers all you need to do to make your smart beer fridge a reality. From hacking the Wii Balance board and programming the Raspberry Pi with Python, he even shows you how to add a door sensor and stream data from the refrigerator to a cloud service so you can access it on an internet device.
It’s an ingenious hack nonetheless, albeit you need some technical skills, but you can handle it. Check out the link below for the full tutorial.
Read MorePhoto by: Jamie Bailey | Make
