Siri versus a japanese accent

The folks over at Red Pepper land came up with a way to get Siri to pour you a cold glass of beer. They use Twitter, an Arduino controller and an R/C car and call it Beeri. Here’s how Beeri works:

We first created the Twitter account @beeribot with my phone number attached. On a 4S we then created a contact called “Tweet Beeri” with (40404) as the mobile number. This is the same process anyone can use to Tweet by text message. Now, if I say to Siri, “Text Tweet Beeri – could you pour me a beer?” a text is sent to 40404 and immediately tweeted out via @beeribot.

The second part is Beeri herself – an RC truck with modified electronics. We needed Beeri to constantly be looking for new “pour” Tweets in the @beeribot stream so we rigged her up an Arduino Uno w/ WiFi shield and set it up to poll @beeribot’s stream via the Twitter REST API every 10 seconds.

When Beeri sees a new Tweet containing the word “pour” she triggers the sequence of preprogrammed pour commands (go, stop, adjust) that interface with the truck’s circuit board to control her movement. Her route is preprogrammed (drive straight) until her two proximity detectors sense her moving away from the puncture wall after impact. This allows her to halt the driving sequence and adjust to a 6 inch depth in order to get the beer to enter the funnel.

RedPepperLand via tipb