Hi Guys,
I recently put the finishing touches on an improved LCD mount for my kegbot. I've taken a Matrix-Orbital 20x4 character display and a 4x3 keypad and mounted them in a project box attached to the freezer door. Pretty simple hardware wise, but looks much better than before.

With my LCD now in a hard to miss location, I was hoping to have the LCD display some more information. I came up with a short list of "screens" that I thought may be useful to have displayed.

keg volume stats
last drinker\drink stats
current keg session stats
top drinker\drinker breakdown
reminder to scan RFID card

Additional, the 4x3 keypad also allow for the possibility of another simple authentication method. (Pin based user identification) IE, select user account on lcd and enter pin to authenticate.

Thoughts? Criticism? Praise? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Geoff

Geez it's quiet in here. No problem for me. After restocking with some different usb cables I was able to connect the LCD display and the keypad.

Here's a close up of the inside of the case.


Parts:
Matrix Orbital USB Display (20x4 lcd) #LK204-25-USB-WB Product Manual Attached
keypad - 12 button COM-08653
Project box Polycase.com (DC-45FMBYR)
USB cable-A female panel mount to left angle mini-B (low profile) -12 inch #RR-2MBL1AFPM-12GL

Now that I have the hardware working how can we go about getting this integrated into the kegbot. I'm hoping we can work on this as a two part improvement. First, expand the kegbot drinking stats displayed on the LCD display. Second, create a user authentication method via the LCD and keypad.

Cheers,
Geoff

Nice work! I like it! Thinking about doing something similar but with a USB keypad. And yes, it's been very quiet in here lately I've noticed also. Been too busy myself though to break the silence.

Nice mounting job, Geoff!

I came up with a short list of "screens" that I thought may be useful to have displayed.

keg volume stats
last drinker\drink stats
current keg session stats
top drinker\drinker breakdown
reminder to scan RFID card

First two are now implemented; good ideas on the others.

Brace yourselves: here's a very exciting video of the current Kegbot UI:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJfZngtG8x4

(My temp sensor was misbehaving, hence the very warm beer..)

This looks great, I've thought about bypassing any physical authentication and using just a red/green led and pin numbers to pour drinks in order to simplify things a bit.