Problem
Traditional beverage service in social and hospitality environments is manual, inconsistent, and difficult to scale. Preparing mixed drinks requires time, skill, and human availability, creating friction in high-traffic settings and limiting automation possibilities.
Existing automated drink systems are often:
- Closed, inflexible hardware platforms
- Difficult to customize or extend
- Lacking intelligent user interaction
- Not designed with modern cloud architecture
- Unable to integrate conversational AI or dynamic recommendations
There is a clear gap between physical beverage automation and modern software capabilities. Most solutions focus solely on mechanical dispensing, without leveraging real-time cloud communication, data-driven personalization, or AI-assisted interaction.
DrinkBot was designed to bridge that gap — combining real-world hardware control with scalable cloud infrastructure and intelligent software to create a smarter, more interactive beverage automation platform.
Implementation
DrinkBot is a full-stack, IoT-enabled beverage automation system that connects software directly to a real-world dispensing device. I designed and built the platform using ReactJS on the frontend and Python on the backend, creating a seamless interface that allows users to select and serve drinks through an intelligent, automated system.
The application controls physical hardware in real time using MQTT for device communication, enabling secure, low-latency messaging between cloud services and the DrinkBot unit. The system integrates with AWS and DigitalOcean infrastructure, leveraging a serverless architecture for scalability, reliability, and efficient resource utilization.
DrinkBot also incorporates AI-driven features, including a virtual bartender that can recommend drinks, and generate combinations. This blends hardware control, cloud infrastructure, and artificial intelligence into a single production system.
Key technologies and architecture components include:
- ReactJS frontend with dynamic UI for drink selection and system management
- Python backend handling business logic, authentication, and API integrations
- MQTT-based real-time device communication
- AWS services for cloud messaging, artificial intelligence, and infrastructure components
- DigitalOcean hosting and deployment environments
- Serverless design principles for scalability and cost efficiency
DrinkBot represents a complete full-stack engineering effort — combining frontend development, backend architecture, cloud infrastructure, real-time communication protocols, and physical device integration into a single cohesive platform.
Screenshots
