Yeah but problem with Lazydrinker is it needs an expensive closed source circuit board and software ($90), the idea here is to make something completely open source in which everything can be made as cheap as possible while being able to be experimented with and modified by anyone.
Here's an innovative twist on how to get the mechanics to work:
This also gives me the idea that maybe the valves for soda fountains can be adapted for this, they're designed to work under pressure and are probably easy to rig up with solenoids.
Is this still active? I would like to start working on something like this.
In case people weren't familiar with them, I just wanted to mention that there is a kind of valve for fluids that must be contamination-free. It uses flexible silicone tubing which is either open or pinched off, either direcly by a solenoid clamping down on it, or indirectly with air pressure in a surrounding chamber. The fluid never touches anything but the inside of the tube. Pinch valves can work with fluids that have solid particles, and even very thick and viscous fluids.
A similar idea is used in a peristaltic pump: you have the tube with fluid wrapped around a rotor with some rollers that compress the tube and push little packets of fluid along. Again, no leaks and no contamination; the fluid touches no moving parts, just the inside of the flexible tube.
Somebody just gave me a great idea, how about building in some drinking games in the software? Or at least a "random" function where it'll randomly come up with combinations, then give you a list of what it did just in case you actually invents something good.
;D
Ok, after a year(ish) of work I have a semi-working product. The video is a demo of the first drinks poured by the system.
http://vimeo.com/17966475
The box on the left contains the pump (the noisy thing), it's power supply, pressure switch and reservoir. The cabinet was laser-cut by ponoko nz.
you may notice I'm using valves to control air rather than fluid flow, it turns out this works pretty well if you avoid syphon effect which is why the outlet tubing is raise and coiled up. The difference in pouring rates is caused by the mechanical advantage of the red liquid (further down the bottle therefore more surface area leading to a higher pouring rate).
Expect a website and wiki update sometime over christmas.
Anyway, enjoy.
p.s. website is http://openbar.byethost16.com/