By Matt Richardson, Tyler DeAngelo and Ben Light
Check ‘N Chew offers immediate gratification to social media users. The concept is simple, check into Foursquare and get a gumball.
Matt, Tyler and Ben hacked a basic gumball machine by adding a stepper motor, Arduino and an XBee. There’s a port on the rear of the machine that plugs into a wall to power it all (see photo above). The Check ‘N Chew communicates wirelessly with an ethernet-to-wireless gateway device. When someone checks into an authorized location, information is sent from a server to the gateway, and a gumball is dispensed. The whole process is quite speedy, only taking a couple of seconds from Foursquare check-in to gumball dispensing.
Check ‘N Chew on Engadget
Check ‘N Chew on the Foursquare Blog