Comment on Slurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp

rumba@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• cley_faye@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  And it probably should be. We could even have a set of small plates embedded somewhere for quick swapping on demand.

  I like computers, but having an individual computer to run a single drink display really is overkill. At least use one to drive all the labels simultaneously, if you still want the ability to display nifty animations of liquid flowing above the actual liquid actually visibly flowing.

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  • rumba@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    They’re probably paying a dollar or two for a esp32 at volume. When one fails a tech probably just throws the old one away.

    tween this and the e-ink pricetags on merchandise…

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    • MyNameIsIgglePiggle@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Esp32 probably doesn’t have a bios crash. My bet is a raspberry pi

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      • boonhet@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Not a BIOS crash but a Linux startup has been interrupted here. So likely you’re right

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      • kbotc@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        They are RPis.

        I saw this setup at my local 7/11

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  • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Exactly. This implementation makes no sense. Unless the logos are animated, need to change frequently, or supposed to show advertising (I hope not), a backlit plastic label would do the same job just fine. In fact, that has done the same job for decades at this point.

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    • 0x0@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      supposed to show advertising

      I’m betting on this.

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      • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        sharp exhale You’re probably right.

        Is there some version of Occam’s Razor where “enshitification” is the most likely answer?

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    • lb_o@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      This implementation makes a lot of sense if you think about the ability to support variable amount of screens without the need of complex routing and addressing.

      • It has increased reliability where one failure doesn’t break the whole system.

      As for the need of it - well, that’s “slurp” they try to sell some cold sugar to impulsive people who like flashy things. That implies animations on the screen and being “not boring”.

      The fact that they changed by itself means that backlit plastic label was doing poorer job than this abomination.

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• A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  And it still should be.

  Cause its stupid. This is even dumber than walgreens replacing freezer doors with LCD screens that don’t let you see whats inside.

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  • rumba@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    yeah, that is the most f’d up thing, I saw it at a travel plaza, it looks like the fever dream of some tech mogul’s kid that they just sink money into because they’re infatuated with it.

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    • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      its some serious cyberpunk 2077 shit.

      I can see someone slinging a cyberdeck pinging a drink machine to infiltrate the LAN.

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• Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  The difference in what can be done and the amount of work that needs to go into it between discrete digital electronics and just having a microcontroller there is HUGE.

  Also with microcontrollers and microprocessors most of the work moves from Electronics Engineering and circuit-design space to Software Engineering and software development, and the latter experts are easier to find plus the development cycle is way more friendly when it’s just code which you can change and upload at will rather than physical circuits.

  Even more entertaining, microcontrollers are so stupidly cheap (the most basic ones cost a few cents) that throwing in a microcontroller is almost always significantly cheaper than doing the control stuff with discrete electronics.

  I actually got an EE degree back when we embedded circuits were just starting to be used so I didn’t really get taught how to use them, then went for a career in software instead of electronics and came back to digital electronics years later and it’s like night and day between the discrete digital electronics age and the everything is a computing device era.

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  • 0x0@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    You’re forgetting the main driving factor behind being able to personalize a screen vs a plastic label: advertising.

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    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      What I describe goes well beyond things with screens.

      For example computer mice have a microcontroller inside (and unless it serves a mechanical function, not much more than that) and cars have several, only one of which actual handles a proper screen (it’s actually a microprocessor rather than a mere microcontroller).

      The simplest microcontrollers have nowhere near enough memory to handle any half-way decent display (some nothing at all, some can just about handle a two-tone 320x200 display over I2C or SPI, some can handle 640x480 16-bit RGB but without animations as they don’t have enough memory to actual have a buffer for image composition) and yet they keep getting sold in massive numbers.

      Pretty much all digital electronics out there no matter how invisible to users has been replaced by embedded microcontrollers or, in a some use cases, single function controllers (which are basically microcontroller programs converted into integrated circuits).

      Embedded computing was a massive revolution in digital electronics.

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