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The WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery is the OG Beer Robot

If Willy Wonka had invented a home brew beer machine, it would have been the WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery (is it a coincidence that they share the same initials?). The stainless steel, floor-standing factory will give a chilled, ready-to-drink pint in seven days, which is impressive enough. Better, though, is the clever way it does it.

First, a quick recap on manual home brew (we’ll assume you’re using a kit and not mashing your own wort). First, sterilize everything. Second, mix the ingredients, heat them and add to the bucket. Place in a warm spot, cross your fingers and wait.

Then, drain the clear beer from the sediment beneath, into a second sterilized container, or into a pressure barrel, or bottles. Add sugar, seal and wait for the beer to get fizzy.

It’s bigger than you thought, right?

The WWPB does all of this inside one machine. After sterilization, you add water and it is boiled and sterilized. Then add the wort (either from a kit, or of your own making). Add yeast, then sit back and do nothing but check pressure until next weekend. This is the first innovation: the brewery ferments the beer in a pressurized container, meaning you don’t have to carbonate it later — it is fizzy from the beginning.

Next comes clarification. Draining the clear beer into another container would lose the fizz, so the WWPB injects a clarification agent into the beer, under pressure (using CO2). You then attach a small vessel to the bottom of the brew tank and the sediment settles into this. Remove the vessel and you have a tank full of clear, fizzy beer.

Then you switch the temperature control to chill, and the beer is brought to serving temperature. There’s even a tap and pressure system to dispense the beer and keep it fizzy down to the last drop. The brewery uses a 23 liter (6 US gallon) tank

If you have ever made beer, you will be suitably impressed by this very clever design, invented by New Zealanders Ian Williams and Anders Warn. You may be put off by the price, though: US$4,500. That’s certainly a lot for even the most dedicated home brewer, but for a cafe that wants to make and sell its own brew, it’s a pretty good price.

The WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery [WilliamsWarn]

See Also:

• Extreme, Custom and Pimped-Out Kegerators
• High-Tech Home Brew Kit Would Make Beer Robot Swoon
• Genetically Engineered Beer Could Combat Cancer

Oscium should have called its iPad oscilloscope kit the iScilloscope

When I saw the Oscium iMSO-104 oscilloscope, I smacked my forehead with my open palm and cried “Of course!” What could be more sensible than taking a bulky, expensive piece of hardware and shrinking it down to fit in an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch?

The iMSO-104 is a combination of a free app and a hardware kit which attaches via dock connector. With these two parts, you have a mixed signal oscilloscope. This isn’t an oscilloscope which plays it coy, one day flirting with you and the next refusing your calls. The mixed signals in this case are digital and analog. You get one analog input and four digital, and you can choose to display the signals from any or all on the screen together.

Using the computing power and display of your iDevice means that, according to Oscium, this is the world’s smallest oscilloscope. That’s neat and all, but it would be a waste if the iPad’s touch screen wasn’t used.

Happily, it is. Swipe up and down to change the analog input level. Pinch to zoom the axes in and out, and tap and drag to move the input readouts just where you want them.

The app is free to try out, and can be grabbed from the App Store right now. The iMSO-104 kit is just shy of $300, and the first batch — due to ship April 29th — has already sold out. More should be coming soon.

iMSO-104 oscilloscope [Oscium via Slashgear]

iMSO app [iTunes]

See Also:

• MAME on an Oscilloscope: Runs Star Wars Arcade Game
• Oscilloscope
• DIY Oscilloscope is Awesomely Affordable

Remember the Razer Switchblade? It’s that 7-inch multitouch gaming device with a fully tactile and adaptive keyboard. It first stole our attention as a Windows 7 concept on the way to wowing us with a hands-on in January. Well, we’ve now got the first official launch country: China, with the help of Tencent Holdings, China’s largest internet service portal. Unfortunately, we still don’t have final specs on the Oak Trail clamshell, a price, or even a date. Fear not rest of world — China’s just the first market announced in what appears to be an attempt to highlight a new partnership between Intel and Tencent. Today the two companies announced plans to staff a new research center with 60 engineers (expected to grow to 200, eventually) who’ll work together on products and services for tablets and gaming in the Chinese market. Good luck guys, we hear the Chintendo Vii is fiercely competitive.

Razer Switchblade headed to China with help from Intel and Tencent originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 05:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Good news for anyone feeling left behind by the broadband revolution just because of their post code: Fujitsu has just announced a joint venture to deliver fiber optic connectivity to neglected rural homes in the UK. Built on hardware provided by Cisco and supported by Virgin Media and TalkTalk, this network will focus on channeling fiber directly to the home, which is said to provide symmetrical 1Gbps bandwidth with up to 10Gbps speeds considered possible down the line. Best news of all, perhaps, is that the cabling will be available on a wholesale basis to all ISPs, not just the ones involved in the project, so the UK may finally get a decent taste of what competition in the internet service space feels like. Alas, there’s a key line in the press release that notes the new venture is dependent on BT providing “access to its underground ducts and telegraph poles on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms,” which it apparently isn’t doing at the moment. Ah well, we’re sure they’ll sort things out like the mature professionals that they are. Full PR after the break.

Continue reading Fujitsu to build 1Gbps fiber optic broadband network in the UK, but needs BT to play fair first

Fujitsu to build 1Gbps fiber optic broadband network in the UK, but needs BT to play fair first originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 05:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When actor Hugh Grant’s car broke down in the middle of the English countryside and a paparazzi offered him a lift to the nearest town, he saw his chance to turn the tables on the man who blew the whistle on the UK phone-tapping scandal of 2006, which saw 24 celebrities’ lines bugged. More »