This is the web interface to the bar monkey, providing access to the drink and ingredient database, as well as account management functions. If you're curious what exactly the bar monkey is, read on...

The bar monkey is an automated drink dispenser. After a user selects which drink they want from thousands in the database, the bar monkey measures and pours all of the ingredients. The drinks list can be filtered to only include drinks made from certain ingredients, and also by drinks which can be made with the ingredients on hand. A history of what drinks a user pours is maintained by the monkey, although the information is kept private. Statistics such as drink cost, number of pours, and average rating are calculated for each drink.

At present 14 ingredients are under computer control, although the database and inventory includes many more. If a drink cannot be completely poured by the bar monkey, the remaining ingredients must be added by the user. Ingredients requiring refrigeration are not automatically poured, although future plans include the addition of a mini-fridge to solve this problem.

In addition to pouring drinks automatically, the bar monkey keeps an inventory of the quantity of each ingredient available. When combined with users' drink ratings, the bar monkey is able to make suggestions about which ingredients should be bought. Suggestions aim to keep enough ingredients in stock to make a large selection of highly rated drinks.

Construction of the bar monkey took place over the course of several weeks at the beginning of September 2007. Various parts were collected over the prior summer from Ebay, with the remainder found at a local home improvement store. The parts list for the bar monkey includes:

• Syrup pumps normally used in soda fountains
• Refrigerator ice-maker values
• An air compressor to drive the pumps
• Many yards of various sizes of food-grade tubing
• A custom relay circuit to control the ice-maker valves

If you want to see some pictures, or if you're curious how one goes about building a bar monkey, check out our construction page.

This bar monkey was inspired by similar devices described in detail at barmonkey.net.