Open Source Espresso Machine Is One Delicious Rabbit Hole Inside Another (arstechnica.com) 35
In a Substack post, Norm Sohl describes how he built a highly configurable machine out of open source hardware plans and the thermal guts of an Espresso Gaggia. An anonymous reader shares a summary from Ars Technica: Like many home espresso enthusiasts, Sohl had seen that his preferred machine, the Gaggia Classic Pro, could be modified in several ways, including adding a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller and other modifications to better control temperature, pressure, and shot volumes. Most intriguing to Sohl was Gaggiuino, a project that adds those things with the help of an Arduino Nano or STM32 Blackpill, a good deal of electrical work, and open software.
Sohl ended up creating a loose guide to making your own highly configurable machine out of common espresso machine parts and the Gaggiuino software. From his own machine, he salvaged a pump with a pressure sensor, a boiler with a temperature sensor, an overpressure valve, and brew head. Sohl made a chassis for his new machine out of extrusion rails and stiffening plates. The high-voltage boards and components were assembled breadboard style onto acrylic panels, held up by poster-tack adhesive. A 120-volt power connector was salvaged from a PC power supply, then mounted with a 3D-printed bracket. The low-voltage wires and parts were also tacked onto acrylic, individually crimped, and heat shrink-wrapped. And the control panel was 3D-printed, allowing for toggle switches and a touch-panel screen.
There's more work to be done on Sohl's unit; the exposed boiler and 120-volt wiring need to be hidden, and a drip tray would be nice. But it works. The first shot was fast and under-extracted, suggesting a finer grind and settings changes. Then again, that describes almost every first-time home espresso setup. Sohl writes that he hopes future versions of his project will make use of the Gaggiuino project's own circuit board design and that he'll have his 3D project files posted for sharing.
Sohl ended up creating a loose guide to making your own highly configurable machine out of common espresso machine parts and the Gaggiuino software. From his own machine, he salvaged a pump with a pressure sensor, a boiler with a temperature sensor, an overpressure valve, and brew head. Sohl made a chassis for his new machine out of extrusion rails and stiffening plates. The high-voltage boards and components were assembled breadboard style onto acrylic panels, held up by poster-tack adhesive. A 120-volt power connector was salvaged from a PC power supply, then mounted with a 3D-printed bracket. The low-voltage wires and parts were also tacked onto acrylic, individually crimped, and heat shrink-wrapped. And the control panel was 3D-printed, allowing for toggle switches and a touch-panel screen.
There's more work to be done on Sohl's unit; the exposed boiler and 120-volt wiring need to be hidden, and a drip tray would be nice. But it works. The first shot was fast and under-extracted, suggesting a finer grind and settings changes. Then again, that describes almost every first-time home espresso setup. Sohl writes that he hopes future versions of his project will make use of the Gaggiuino project's own circuit board design and that he'll have his 3D project files posted for sharing.
A lot of effort (Score:1)
And then I'd have to drink the burnt beanwater too?
No thanks.
Fuck all that (Score:2, Funny)
I drink instant coffee in ice cold water.
Discuss below.
Re: (Score:1)
I tried this! It was at that moment I realized I had wasted so much of my life. If you're really hardcore you can even skip the water part.
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That actually sounds tastier than Toxic Bean Waste (tm).
But then, so does used motor oil.
Re:Fuck all that (Score:4, Funny)
I drink instant coffee in ice cold water.
If there's a character alignment chart for coffee snobs, you're definitely on the "chaotic evil" side of it.
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I drink instant coffee in ice cold water.
Discuss below.
Don't be a moran.
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Cold and bitter.
Now this is a justifiable IoT use case. (Score:3)
I would actually want this connected to a network so I can have it start brewing five minutes before I get home, especially if I don't know when that will be until pretty close to that moment. If I don't load up any ingredients before I leave in the morning, then hacking it won't accomplish much. Even if I do, all you can do is ruin my day by brewing my coffee when I'm not there.
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I have a Gaggia machine that was fucking expensive. It makes great coffee but is always asking me to empty the already emptied drip tray. My hack is to close the door and very quickly press the coffee button before the software can complain. I’d get another but I already spent almost 2 grand on this one.
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You could clean the sensor ... perhaps with a cotton tip, or simply use a straw that has a joint, point the short part to the sensor and blow into it.
Perhaps better: simply google for "model and problem". There is probably a simple solution.
Re:Now this is a justifiable IoT use case. (Score:4, Interesting)
Reminds me of this guy. https://www.stuff.co.nz/techno... [stuff.co.nz]
Also reminds me of my young self who had trouble gathering the motivation to wake up in the morning. I put a drip machine on my bedside and set it up with a timer. And the smell of coffee and the brewing sounds in the morning definitely were one of the best alarm clocks i ever had.
But seriously, you need to have coffee ready exactly on the moment you arrive home? If a cup brewed on the wrong time can ruin your day, maybe you should lay low for a while?:)
I would say I need something like 15min to conext switch to being home before I can actually enjoy a cup. Instead of, you know, just mindlessly drinking it without even noticing it, all the while my cognitive capacity is tied up reorienting into a new problem space.
Also, this https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I would say I need something like 15min to conext switch to being home before I can actually enjoy a cup. :P
I prefer 30mins, that is roughly one ice cold beer, depending on season and temperature outside
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Here's how I visualized it:
You want to go to grocery shopping. You know you'll want a little coffee after you get back, but you don't know if you're going to find everything you want in one store, or if you'll have to visit two or three. Whenever you complete your list, you send a message to start the brew because you're on your way home and will be there when the coffee is as good as it's going to get.
where's the DeLorean? (Score:2)
You can't fool me! That's Doc Brown's fusion reactor.
Vintage aircraft-grade toggles. (Score:4, Interesting)
Vintage aircraft-grade toggles. Those look from the '50's. Nice!
That guy takes his caffeine and hacking very seriously. This is what we need more of, News for Nerds! Caffeine, hackery, doesn't get much nerdier than that.
Give your GFCI outlet a good workout (Score:2)
Water and exposed wiring are always a good mix. If the espresso doesn't wake you up, the electric shocks sure will.
I've owned what I'm assuming is a "manual" style espresso machine for quite awhile. You grind some beans, add the grinds to the filter cup, lock the portafilter on the machine and push a button to start/stop the pump. The majority of the work is all the cleaning required, which is why most of the time I'm too lazy to use it. It looks like the only things that are automated with the machine
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I've owned what I'm assuming is a "manual" style espresso machine for quite awhile. You grind some beans, add the grinds to the filter cup, lock the portafilter on the machine and push a button to start/stop the pump.
You have a semi-automatic. Fully automatic grinds the beans, dumps the old puck, drops that fresh grind into the portafilter and pulls the shot.
A manual machine is like a Europa Piccola, a lever machine that this President of IT of this place I was at about 10 years ago has. Only his is from the 60's and he's rebuilt it once.
You literally "pull a shot." https://www.lapavoni.com/en/pr... [lapavoni.com]
I'd be happy to have what you have. I just don't fancy spending anywhere from 1 to 3 k on an espresso machine. I'll st
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I've owned what I'm assuming is a "manual" style espresso machine
You have a semi-automatic. Fully automatic grinds the beans, dumps the old puck, drops that fresh grind into the portafilter and pulls the shot.
... with one pull of the trigger!
I think I saw a Patreon the other day for a bump-stock espresso machine. It's just a 3D printed piece of plastic that you attach. When your over-caffeinated hand jitters, multiple shots of espresso come out. Until of course it jams, as the mechanism was never designed for such abuse.
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I've owned what I'm assuming is a "manual" style espresso machine
You have a semi-automatic. Fully automatic grinds the beans, dumps the old puck, drops that fresh grind into the portafilter and pulls the shot.
... with one pull of the trigger!
I think I saw a Patreon the other day for a bump-stock espresso machine. It's just a 3D printed piece of plastic that you attach. When your over-caffeinated hand jitters, multiple shots of espresso come out. Until of course it jams, as the mechanism was never designed for such abuse.
I hate that I laughed at this.
Re: Give your GFCI outlet a good workout (Score:2)
FYI a puck screen drastically lowers the amount of cleaning and also makes the waterflow much more even.
Duh! I 3D print my coffee every morning (Score:3)
Why bother altering some flawed piece of machinery?
bialetti (Score:3)
I guess it was marketeers who came up with the idea of espresso machines to drain the hipsters of superfluous income so they could have it like in their hipster bars. Cos those use machines, too, right. Right, but they're for serving espresso's non-stop.
Fun and games to DIY such a waste of machinery, sure. When looking for a challenge, one could also DIY something that makes real sandwiches, sudo make didn't cut it here.
Anyways, anyone halfway serious about the actual espresso to drink, get a machinetta (bialetti or a knock-off) already. Not an actual machine.
Re:bialetti (Score:4, Informative)
You mean a moka pot. Yeah, like Bialetti. We call those "Grecas" or just "cafetera" back home.
Nice try, but no. But yes! How to put it.. no, it's not a real espresso, yes, a moka will give you far better coffee than any drip ever.
Mokas are hard to control with an electric stove, and with a gas stove you need to ride the flame, and lower it the instant it starts sputtering, or you'll end up with coffee all over your stove.
(Moka's not real espresso, because real espresso needs 9 bar / 120psi and ~190*F for the water. Moka can't deliver that pressure.)
But moka *is* delicious. Wide-spread use in the Carribean. I grew up wiht one in my house, one in my aunt's house, and I have my own. Drip's quicker and less labor-intensive. The moka comes out when I have time to actually use it properly.
Do it right, and you can get crema from a moka pot. In fact, that's how you know you got it right. My (now ex) wife never "got it right." She never got it to make crema.
Even Bialetti's site acknowledges that moka pots are "poor man's espresso." Or at least, it did about 10 years ago. And fwiw, I think espresso machines came out in the early 1900's, they're not a "new" thing.
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Nice try, but no. But yes! How to put it.. no, it's not a real espresso, yes, a moka will give you far better coffee than any drip ever.
I love my moka pot and I don't own a drip machine any more. Good drip coffee is excellent, but it's different from moka coffee. I wouldn't say better or worse, just different. Don't ever get the drip coffee in England, it's usually awful.
Mokas are hard to control with an electric stove, and with a gas stove you need to ride the flame, and lower it the instant it starts sput
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Yeah it wasn't a bialetti, it was a stainless steel knockoff one of some sort with a circular base not polyhedral.
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machinetta (bialetti)
They do not really make espresso, and are not easy to handle. Especially if you forget them a moment, and the rubber ring to tighten them burns away. Espresso should have a defined temperature of around 85C - 88C. But a machinetta is based on the principle that the steam of the boiling water presses the water through the coffee. Much to hot for a real good coffee/espresso.
Don't get me wrong: with the right type of grinded coffee, they are kind of great and simple. But I prefer my $150
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Key takeaways were:
1. boiling water is pushed up through the grind by the steam at temperature below 100 degrees. Not sure about how close to 85-88, but not far, and
2. always remove the moka from the heat as soon as it starts gurgling. that's when the steam starts going through the grind at higher temps (termodinamycally unstable system), and extracting the nasty-tasting stuff
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always remove the moka from the heat as soon as it starts gurgling
Interesting, might try that.
Should have come to that idea myself, facepalm.
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Anyways, anyone halfway serious about the actual espresso to drink, get a machinetta (bialetti or a knock-off) already.
Anyone halfway serious about espresso already has one. We take them on holidays when we don't have access to the proper way of making an espresso.
Water and electricity (Score:2)
Woe me and my Mr. Coffee maker (Score:2)