Drunkbox

[PLAY VIDEO]

Here is a smart project who's purpose is to throw money on someone's face if he's drunk enough.

To make it even smarter you can do as me and put some "bonus" bills to offer drinks or hugs to the people that make the box blow bills. This way, they should quickly end up at the hospital ! Just kidding here hey !

The box also contains a button to be able to manually send bills if necessary.

I think it's worth mentioning "PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY !"

This project really is borderline but its goal is not to put people into ethylic coma !
If you want to be smarter than me, just invert the way it works by throwing bills only if the people isn't drunk ;)

Led matrix + backpack

Some wires

MQ3 gas sensor

DC Motor

Arduino UNO R3 board (or any other as long as you have enough pins)

PCB Board

MOSFET Transistor

22K Ohm linear potentiometer

One momentary push button

One Diode

1K Ohm resistor

Power supply : 6V min 15V max - 1A min 2A max

A box

Optional parts :

Paper to cover the box for a better finishing

Screws

Magnets for box closing

Velcro to fix paper on the box

I also 3D printed a plastic support to fix everything inside the board (mostly the motor and the arduino) but it's up to you to make something that fits your box.

Here is the 3D model for my box :

I didn't think about taking pictures of all the soldering steps so you'll have to deal with the schematics in attachments.

But the idea is to solder the transistor, the potentiometer, the resistor and the diode on the PCB board.

I used right angle female headers to make connection of external components (led matrix, gas sensor, DC motor and arduino) to the PCB board easier.

The potentiometer is here to change the necessary alcohol level to have in order to activate the bills throwing. Or, in other words, to change the difficulty.

All the rest of the wiring has been done via the Dupont Wires without soldering anything. Just plugging wires to female side and pluging male side to a female header on the arduino or on the PCB board.

I then taped or glued things so it holds in place.

You'll first have to cut holes for the led matrix, the gas sensor, the potentiometer axis and the arduino power adapter as well as its USB connector in order to be able to reprogram it anytime without to remove everything from the box.

Define where you want to fix things, think about the bills size as well as the motor size.

I originally made a wood support fixed with small nails inside the box and i fixed the arduino to it with the same nail.

The motor was fixed to the box and connected to a wheel through a belt. This wasn't good.

I remade it by 3D printing a support to replace the wooden one. This way i could make holes perfectly aligned to the arduino's mounting holes and the DC motor mounting holes. The big advantage of it is that i don't need any belt anymore. I simply 3D printed a big wheel that fits the motor's shaft. This wheel will throw the bills and never fail at it ! Before that, i had to put the belt back in place waaaay too often.

Here are the wheel and the support sizedfor my box. You'll most probably have to edit them to fit your box :

My box had a locking mechanisme that i removed so the front face is flat.

But in order to be able to "close" it, i drilled small holes on the borders and glued small strong earth magnets inside.

This way the lid will attach the box. I personnally put three of them.

Also, i used velcro to fix the white paper on the lid.

But if you make things properly you won't really need this. I actually used the wrong face of the box as the front the machine. The paper opens from the back, but the box opens from the front... smart !

Programming of the board is fairly simple.

First, download the Arduino IDE.

Second, download the code to upload on the arduino. The project can be found here on github, but you can also get a ZIP of it by clicking here.

Unzip the archive and navigate to the "arduino" folder. Just double click the "arduino.ino" file, the Arduino IDE will open.

If necessary you can change the values on the "CUSTOMIZABLE VARIABLES" part.

You might also want to translate the "counter_bmpX" animation frames.

When waiting for someone to blow it says "Blow here ↓". The "Blow" word is simple text, but i wanted an arrow after/under the "here" word as well as a different animation so i created a frame by frame animation. Each frame is simple binary code saying which pixel to set ON. You can either update the animation or remove it to simply say "Blow here" with pure text.

To make all the frames i used this tool of mine :

http://www.durss.ninja/projects/thermal-printer-code-generator/app/

Click on the "Image" button at the top right and simply draw 8x8 images. Watch the image at top to see an exemple of the options enabled to generate hexadecimal data ready to be copy/pasted on the arduino code.

When you're ready to go, just upload the code on the arduino and try your new toy !

Try pushing the button to manually activate the motor then try the alcohol sensor by putting some strong alcohol bottle in front of it. Also, ry to play with the potentiometer to see if it actually changes the difficulty.

Finally, make a "calibration party" where everyone gets badly drunk and turn the potentiometer so the most drunk of you makes it throw bills not too easily.

BE CAREFUL not to start the motor while only plugged via USB to your computer ! Your USB port might not appreciate it ! Plug the power supply first as the motor will draw more current than your USB port can handle !

In order for the wheel to be able to grab the bills, i put hot glue on the hollow as it more adhesive than simple 3D printed plastic. But maybe you can print it with a different and softer plastic.

As the box is wider than the bills i added a cardboard lid inside that keeps the bills in place. But not too tight or the bills might get stuck. The cardoard is simply hot glued on the 3D printed plastic support.

When bills are properly positionned the machine can throw up to 80-100 bills per second. Enough to but a huge mess in a quite small amount of time

As i made it with a box i already had, this project is really made for it. This means you probably won't be able to just use my 3D printing models. But it shouldn't be too hard to adapt to your needs.

Also, it's probably worth mentioning something like "PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY !" this project really is borderline but its goal is not to put people into ethylic coma !

If you want to be smarter than me, just invert the way it works by throwing bills only if the people isn't drunk yet ;)

Here are the bills and bonuses i made (in french sorry !). The faces on the bills are the ones of our lovely bartenders, feel free to do as you want !