The serious perils of making cocktails at home cannot be understated

The serious perils of making cocktails at home cannot be understated. Who hasn’t spent an evening cleaning up spilled mixers, coping with an eyeful of lime juice, and thinking there must be a better way? According to the guys behind Party Robotics, the answer is an open source robotic drink mixer called the Bartendro. It’s on Kickstarter right now, and is hurtling toward full funding.

Bartendro uses peristaltic pumps (dispensers) to mete out accurate volumes of liquid to make the perfect drink in any size you want. If you only want to try a tiny bit of some complicated beverage, Bartendro can make that happen. The dispensers actually use a modified Arduino controller, and are are connected to a router board paired with a Raspberry Pi computer.

The Raspberry Pi is used to deploy a wireless network that you can connect to with a tablet or smartphone. A web interface is used to easily select drinks, which Bartendo mixes up. The router board can handle upto 15 Bartendo dispensers, each drawing liquid from a different bottle as needed. The team claims it is accurate to within one milliliter.

If you want in on Bartendro, there are a few cheaper levels that offer some swag, but no robot. Spend $99-129 and you can get a single dispenser without the Raspberry Pi or router. Be aware, the cheaper option is an early bird special, and it’s nearly sold out as of this writing. The dispenser-only tier is good for hobbyists that want to play with the pumps.