Glowing LED ice cubes warn drinkers when they have too much

Most people wake up the 'morning after' and vow never to drink again - but an MIT student woke up after a disastrous night out and created glowing ice cubes that warn drinkers to slow down.

The prototype device was created by MIT student Dhairya Dand after he woke up in hospital after an alcohol-induced blackout.

The cubes have a built-in accelerometer, which measures movement to track the speed a person is drinking at.

If a person is drinking at a moderate speed, the cubes glow green - if a drinker is going too fast, the cubes glow red.

The system then sends a warning text to a close friend, who can then come and 'rescue' the user.

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"After an alcohol induced blackout, I made self-aware glowing ice-cubes," Dand wrote in a post this week.

"The electronics inside the ice-cubes know how fast and how much you are drinking. The cubes change color from green to orange to finally red as you keep drinking beyond the safety limit. If things get out of control, the cubes send a text to your close friend using your smartphone."

The cubes are made of gel - "perfectly edible and tasty", says Dand - and contain an accelerometer simiilar to the ones in iPhone and other smartphones.

The cubes measure movement, and "reliably guess" how drunk you are, Dand claims.

"They calculate how many sips you have," says Dand. "On my first drink, the cubes beat green.

"On my third drink in less than 30 minutes, the cubes turn red."

"If I didn't stop the cubes would send a text to my close friend."