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How to Use Drinks Machines

Our drinks machines are a bit old and a bit delicate. The coin input is a little bit unrelaible sometimes so we recommend using spacebucks to purchase drinks. You can load spacebucks onto your membership card via our portal here. After you have funds loaded, you can simply swipe your card on the drinks machine swipe area then select your drink.

Future Plans for Drinks Machines

We now have two drinks machines (not to be confused with the solid-object-dispensing Vending Machine). This is fantastic! Some of us want to hack them to be prettier, less generic-looking & at least 20% cooler.

A few design ideas have been kicking around. With two machines it makes it even easier to pick a favourite, since we're picking two favourite designs & not just one. This place is a do-ocracy, meaning the people who put in the time, effort & their own money to re-style the machine will have the artistic control, but it's the hackerspace's group property & we're totally up for suggestions, feedback & cool ideas. Tell us what you want!

For the old drinks machine currently in the lobby which is sporting a generic “cold drinks” design, the current winning idea is a design that looks like a Slurm machine from Futurama. Examples/references:

Drinks1 Drinks1 Drinks1

For the new drinks machine that currently resides in the warehouse and is currently sporting a Coca-Cola logo, awaiting its final location in the warehouse… Who knows! As a test, Timeka knocked together this quick piece last Tuesday, to replace the Diet Coke logo & to see how it looked on an actual machine:

Drinks1 Drinks1

Pretty swanky, but we're undecided if we'll stay with that theme. Mostly because there's a lot of things to choose from… Current list of possibilities: Port-Cola style (example pictured above) Fallout's Nuka-Cola (would look quite fitting in our old, rusted-up warehouse) Simpson's Duff or Flaming Moe Lost's Dharma Initiative generic drinks Bioshock's Plasmids Monkey Island's Grog Oddworld's SoulStorm Brew Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster Idiocracy's Brawndo Battlestar Galactica's Ambrosa Star Trek's Synthehol or Romulan Ale Grand Theft Auto's e-Cola Sam & Max's Banang The BFG's Frobscottle Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's Fizzy Lifting Drink Harry Potter's Butterbeer or Dittany Alice in Wonderland's DRINK ME Powerpuff Girls' Chemical X Alex Mack's GC-161 Love Potion Number 8.5 various RPG games' Ether potions or Phoenix Downs a giant version of the HSBNE logo (personally not a fan of this one, we can do better while still incorporating our logo) a steampunk or stained-window variant of any of the above a “universal drinks machine” theme with a big grid of all the above-mentioned drinks next to buttons with fake “sold out” lights our own unique styling. Dazzle us with your artistic abilities!

Getting designs printed up for us will be rather expensive, however because we're planning to use only a few colours, the current plan is to just airbrush the design on ourselves with some stencils. While the sides can be easily painted over, stripping the existing design off the machines' front isn't doable without destroying the polycarbonate in the process, so the current plan is to just replace the polycarbonate sheets. Relying on the fact that these machines will be in members-only-access areas in rooms containing security cameras, the likelihood of intentional vandalism is low, so I think we should be able to get away with thinner & cheaper 3mm polycarbonate sheeting which is the same thickness used on vending machines destined for office buildings to be used by staff only. The current price to beat is $1602 for 3mm, clear, smooth, UV-treated polycarbonate sheet that's large enough to do one machine. If you know a cheaper source, let us know! smile

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