Adam, Kevin and I have been working on a secure kegerator project. We made a kegerator that uses an Arduino Duemilanove with an RFID reader for access control, a solenoid for controlling the tap and a flow meter for recording how much beer was dispensed. We are reusing our Makerspace keycards and fobs for access. The system is pretty simple and only has a few components. We’ve done a couple of iterations on it so far and are currently working on a custom-etched Arduino shield for the components. While the system currently uses a little Nokia 5110 screen from AdaFruit, we are also working on a version that uses an android phone for display, data logging and cloud-connected goodness.
The old, tired way of storing and dispensing beer relies on cans and refrigerators. This simply won’t do for today’s tech-savvy connoisseur.
Nokia 5110/3310 monochrome LCD + extras. These displays were used in old Nokia 5110/3310 cell phones (before the smart-phone fad turned every cell phone into a TV). It’s a 84×48 pixel monochrome LCD display. These displays are small, only about 1.5″ diagonal, but very readable and come with a white backlight. This display is made of 84×48 individual pixels, so you can use it for graphics, text or bitmaps. These displays are inexpensive, easy to use, require only a few digital I/O pins and are fairly low power as well.
To drive the display, you will need 3 to 5 digital output pins (depending on whether you want to manually control the chip select and reset lines). Another pin can be used to control (via on/off or PWM) the backlight – the backlight LEDs are wired to a transistor.
The display driver is a PCD8544 chip, and it runs at 3.3V so you’ll need a 3V supply handy (you don’t need that much current though, maybe 10mA tops). Logic levels must be 3V to prevent damage but we include a free level shifter chip so you can easily connect it to 5V logic such as an Arduino.
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@K – post up in the forums and we’ll likely be able to assist with any questions about the code.