BarBot/Components/Pressurised Mixer Dispenser

Pressurised Mixer Dispenser

General Description

The pressurised mixer dispenser pours carbonated and other mixer drinks using a servo-driven tap backed by a pressurised system which uses compressed CO2 to siphon drinks out of standard PET carbonated drinks bottles.

The dispensing end is based on this inexpensive fizzy drinks tap that is quite popular on eBay

Red Pop Tap

In normal intended use this tap screws directly onto the bottle, the whole thing is inverted to stand on the base and the user just pushes their glass against the clear plastic tab to dispense. This works great when the bottle is first opened and there is plenty of fizz but it soon becomes necessary to squeeze the bottle to dispense the drink. This limitation seems to be well understood to the extent that most eBay sellers show a picture of the user squeezing the bottle! So it's mostly a novelty item but it does have a fully functional and tap that would otherwise cost significantly more than the cost of the whole item!

A number of options are available to maintain consistent pressure to make this work - the one chosen is to provide a low-pressure head of CO2 that will replace the dispensed drink and stop the drink from going flat. Rather than modify each bottle to provide a port for the incoming CO2, a special two-port cap is used.

CO2 Pop Cap

Mounting & hardware

• Red pop dispenser taps
• TODO: add mounting hardware, tubing, corks and such

Logical

• [boot]Sends message: "ready <dispenser-id>"
• Receives message: "dispense <t-seconds>".
• Uses servo to open tap
• Pause for t-seconds
• Returns servo to closed value position
• Sends message: "done <dispenser-id>"
• Sends message: "ready <dispenser-id>"

Connections

TODO

Power

TODO

Bling

TODO