Patent ID: 8387455

Claim:
In a beverage dispenser having an opaque insulated body with an open top for receipt of beverage and a closed bottom for holding a preselected maximum quantity of beverage within the insulated body and a faucet for serving beverage from the dispenser, the improvement being a beverage quantity indicating assembly, comprising: an electronic display for indicating the quantity of beverage contained within the insulated body up to the preselected maximum quantity; a plurality of individual sensing capacitors located at different sensing levels respectively corresponding to different quantities of beverage within the insulated body, all of the sensing levels being beneath a preselected maximum beverage level corresponding to the preselected maximum quantity of beverage within the insulated body; a reference capacitor located within the insulated body at a location above the maximum beverage level for providing a reference for changes in capacitance due to changes in temperature; an electronic capacitive sensing circuit connected with, and responsive to, both the reference capacitor and each of the plurality of sensing capacitors to provide capacitance sensing signals representative of the capacitance of the each of the sensing capacitors, the capacitance sensing signals being adjusted to compensate for changes in capacitance of the reference capacitor due to changes of temperature of air within the body above the maximum beverage level and surrounding the reference capacitor; and a controller responsive to each of the adjusted capacitive sensing signals to control the electronic display to indicate an amount of beverage within the insulated body.