Party too hard, and they'll text a friend for help.

Glow Cubes
Glow Cubes Dhairya Dand Vimeo

In November, MIT grad student Dhairya Dand blacked out at a party and woke up in the hospital. Some people might use that as a wake-up call to lay off the tequila shots for a few weekends, but Dand, an engineer and former educational toy designer, did one better. Three weeks later, he had created a set of glowing ice cubes called Cheers that let you know when you're going too hard.

A circuit enmeshed in an edible jelly mold monitors the number of sips taken, using an accelerometer that tracks the drink's motion, and calculates how drunk you are based on a timer. Using three cubes with different LED lights, your drink changes color from green to orange to red, letting you know when you should take it easy.

The lights in the ice cubes pulse along with the music. because hey, drinking is supposed to be fun. But if you ignore the warnings and keep drinking when the cubes are telling you to slow down, an IR transceiver allows them to send a text to a close friend letting someone know you're in trouble. An app lets you designate who your emergency contacts are.

Marketing the product wasn't his original intent, but after receiving such a positive response, Dand told The Huffington Post he's considering a Kickstarter campaign to make more of the cubes. Check them out in the video below.

Cheers - alcohol-aware glowing ice-cubes that beat to ambient music from Dhairya Dand on Vimeo.

10 Comments

so if you're the fidgety type and cant stop moving your drink around it probably doesn't work at all, however the disco ice cube lights are cool ;0)

The best remedy against a hang over etc. is sucking and chewing on some ice cubes in between drinks, it brings down your body temperature and partly neutralizes the *effect* of the alcohol.

A way to test if a drink has been "drugged" would be a nice addition to this.

Absurdly impractical.So, your really going to use the same cup all night? Or perhaps you will be fishing the cubes out of your empty cup every time you go to the bar for a refill? "oh, look guys, my ice cubes have turned red, wow, i must be sooo drunk right now, better stop drinking with these girls/guys now, and sober up because the jelly covered circuitry with its led changed color." I mean, really? "Oh, but wait, it PULSES to the music." Wow. Like that really matters in a club filled with lights pulsing.This is a retarded invention.full stop.If you REALLY want to watch how much you drink, take a set amount of money with you.Or drink at home.Color changing jelly cubes...tsk tsk tsk.

I wish the glass would vibrate, flash red, when I have too much to drink and that person next to me, magically-suddenly becomes beautiful, lol. ;)

Really impressive invention of Dhairya Dand. It is good idea to send signal when you are going out of limit.

Thanks for this invention. I want to test, How much it is effective

Anybody who uses these cubes has dependency issues. Anyone who plans in advance to have people come rescue you from your drinking binges TO AVOID GOING TO THE HOSPITAL has serious problems that "magic ice cubes" can't solve. You have some kind of alcholoL sensitivity and shouldn't be drinking.

You see, this is how "engineers" think. Their solutions often don't get to the "heart" of a problem. This guy actually doesn't see this as a behavioral problem, like it's human nature to drink and you can't change human nature, we'll just build some "tool" that infringes on OTHERS while he continues in his "natural behavior".

spark55155,
Or... maybe they take home to many ugly dates from the bar, without knowing it, lol. ;)



June 2013: American Energy Independence

Five amazing, clean technologies that will set us free, in this month's energy-focused issue. Also: how to build a better bomb detector, the robotic toys that are raising your children, a human catapult, the world's smallest arcade, and much more.


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