The insides of a coffee machine replaced with new smart electronics

Add Smarts To Your Old Capsule Coffee Maker

December 16, 2021 by 12 Comments

Everyone has their preferred method of making (and consuming) coffee. While modern coffee makers are starting to come standard with IoT and ‘smart’ capabilities, owners of older models should fear not, as [Andreas Skoglund] shows how just about any old machine can be upgraded with the latest automation wizardry.

The most involved part of this conversion is removing the electronic guts of the Dolce Gusto donor machine, leaving just the original heater, pump and the control levers. With safety in mind, the user must make the machine ‘hot’ by configuring the levers and replacing the coffee capsule manually, otherwise no automated coffee magic can take place.

A low-tech relay powers on the coffee maker, with the entire logic supported by an off-the-shelf microcontroller. If you’re using a Particle.io controller, the provided instructions offer some helpful tips on automatically brewing your first beverage. From there it’s trivial to start using Home Assistant to set up various rules and schedules for your coffee drinking pleasure. You can even select whether you want a small or large cup.

There’s a few improvements that our coffee-starved hero suggests implementing, such as upgrading the power supply, as well as investing in refillable capsules to spite a certain global conglomerate corporation (plus it’s cheaper and much better for the environment). We’re not short on coffee-inspired hacks, so why not also check out this AI Powered Coffee Maker.

Continue reading “Add Smarts To Your Old Capsule Coffee Maker” →

Espresso maker with added nixie flair

AI Powered Coffee Maker Knows A Bit Too Much About You

September 9, 2021 by 20 Comments

People keep warning that Skynet and the great robot uprising is not that far away, what with all this recent AI and machine-learning malarky getting all the attention lately. But we think going straight for a terminator robot army is not a very smart approach, not least due to a lack of subtlety. We think that it’s a much better bet to take over the world one home appliance at a time, and this AI Powered coffee maker might just well be part of that master plan.

Raspberry Pi Zero sitting atop the custom nixie tube driver PCB
PCB stackup with Pi Zero sat atop the driver / PSU PCBs

[Mark Smith] has taken a standard semi-auto espresso maker and jazzed it up a bit, with a sweet bar graph nixie tube the only obvious addition, at least from the front of the unit. Inside, a Raspberry Pi Zero sits atop his own nixie tube hat and associated power supply. The whole assembly is dropped into a 3D printed case and lives snuggled up to the water pump.

The Pi is running a web application written with the excellent Flask framework, and also an additional control application written in python. This allows the user to connect to the machine via Ethernet and see its status. The smarts are in the form of a simple self-grading machine learning algorithm, that takes a time series as an input (in this case when you take your shots of espresso) and after a few weeks of data, is able to make a reasonable prediction as to when you might want it in the future. It then automatically heats up in time for you to use the machine, when you usually do, then cools back down to save energy. No more pointless wandering around to see if the machine is hot enough yet – as you can just check the web page and see from the comfort of your desk.

But that’s not all [Mark] has done. He also improved the temperature control of the water boiler, and added an interlock that prevents the machine from producing a shot until the water temperature is just so. Water level is indicated by the glorious bar graph nixie tube, which also serves a few other user indication duties when appropriate. All in all a pretty sweet build, but we do add a word of caution: If your toaster starts making an unreasonable number of offers of toasted teacakes, give it a wide berth.

Coffee Maker Gives Plants An Automatic Drip

April 23, 2020 by 36 Comments

Somehow, [Jeremy S   Cook]’s wife was able to keep a Keurig machine going for 10 years before it quit slinging caffeine. [Jeremy] got it going again, but decided to buy a new one when he saw how it was inside from a decade of water deposits.

But why throw the machine out like spent coffee grinds? Since the pump is still good, he decided to turn it into an automatic plant watering machine. Now the Keurig pumps water using a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a transistor. [Jeremy] can set up watering cron jobs with PuTTY, or push water on demand during dry spells. We love that he wired up a soil moisture sensor to the red/blue LEDs around the brew button — red means the plant is thirsty, purple means water is flowing, and no light means the plant is quenched and happy.

This project is wide open, but cracking into the Keurig is up to you. Fortunately, that part of the build made it into the video, which is firmly planted after the break.

Old coffee makers really do seem suited to taking up plant care in retirement. Here’s a smart garden made from an espresso machine.

Continue reading “Coffee Maker Gives Plants An Automatic Drip” →

Alexa coffee maker robot

Alexa Robot Coffee Maker Brews Coffee, Speaks For Itself

January 6, 2017 by 16 Comments

To keep hackers fueled and hacking, why not hack a coffee maker into a coffee brewing robot? [Carter Hurd] and [David Frank] did just that at The Ohio State’s Hack OHI/O 24 hour Hackathon. They even won the “Best Hardware Hack”. The video below shows it in action but the guys sent us some extra details on how it’s made.

Alexa coffee maker robot
The electronics

To give it a voice they put Alexa on a Raspberry Pi. Using an audio splitter they have the voice go both to a speaker and to an Arduino. The Arduino then uses the amplitude of the audio signal’s positive values to determine how much to open the “mouth”, the coffee maker’s hinged cover. As is usually the case, there’s some lag, but the result is still quite good.

The brewing is also controlled by the Arduino. They plan to add voice control so that they can simply ask, “Alexa, make me coffee”, but for now they added a switch on the side to start the brewing. That switch tells the Arduino to work one servo to open the cover, another to insert a coffee filter, and two more to scoop up some coffee from a container and dump it into the filter.

They replaced the coffee maker’s on/off switch with a relay so that after the Arduino closes the cover again, it uses the relay to start the brewing. The result is surprisingly human-like. We especially like the graceful movement achieved by the two servos for scooping up and dumping the coffee. Full disclosure: they did admit that it would often either not scoop enough coffee or scoop enough but spill a bunch on the group.

Continue reading “Alexa Robot Coffee Maker Brews Coffee, Speaks For Itself” →

DIY Coffee Maker Filters Out Manufacturer Specificity

June 7, 2014 by 12 Comments

Coffeemaker made from 3D-printed parts and scrap aluminium

This DIY electric coffeemaker prototype uses an assemblage of 3D-printed parts and cast aluminium. [siemenc]’s main goal with this project was to utilize and demonstrate recycling and re-usability. He used Filabot filament exclusively and melted down scrap aluminium such as cans, foil, and CNC mill waste in an oven he fashioned from an old fire extinguisher. He also cast the aluminium parts himself from 3D-printed positives.

Of course, he had to buy the things that make this a coffeemaker such as the hoses, the fuse, and the heating element. If you’re wondering why he didn’t salvage these parts from yard sale machinery, it’s because he wanted to be able to replace any part of it and have it last as long as he needs it to last. The innards he used are not specific to any model, so he should be able to easily find a replacement.

Just like a pour over set up, [siemenc] has fine control over the strength and quantity of the brew. We particularly like this machine’s exotic bird looks as well; it may be a prototype, but it’s quite stylish. If you’re looking to go all the way with DIY coffee, why not grow your own beans and then roast the beans yourself?

 

Phase One Of A Robot Coffee Maker

September 2, 2013 by 13 Comments

coffee fry

A coffee machine that brews a fresh pot of joe,  automatically putting coffee in a filter, filling the coffee maker with water, brewing, dumping the grounds, and adding sugar and cream, all without any human interaction. Some may call it the fevered dream of a madman. Others may call it a vending machine. All we know is [Phil] is working on his own version of this robot par excellence.

This is only phase one of a robotic coffee machine build, but so far [Phil] has a single cup coffee maker that can fill itself with water and dump its grounds automatically.

The electronics are based on a PIC18F4550 that controls two mechanical relays that control the solenoids, one solid state relay that controls power to the coffee maker, and two stepper motor drivers that open the lid of the coffee maker and dump the filter into the wash bin.

It’s an awesome build and we look forward to the next stage of this awesome, truly homebrew build.

 

A Drip Coffee Maker For Camping

September 2, 2013 by 34 Comments

drip

[TE] goes camping, and on his excursion he likes to take just the bare necessities. A sleeping bag, a tent, food, but above all else, coffee. Most camping coffee makers are a percolator design, which is widely regarded as the worst way to make coffee ever. With a little bit of ingenuity, he created an improvised drip coffee maker for camping, just the thing for a nice cup of brew in the wilderness.

If you were to make your own drip coffee maker, your first inclination might be to use a funnel, put in a filter, pour in some coffee, and load it up with hot water. This was [TE]’s first design, but he quickly realized the hole in the bottom of his makeshift funnel would clog very quickly. After investigating his electronic drip coffee maker, he discovered the bottom of the basket had a series of baffles that allowed the filter to drain over its entire bottom surface. But how to replicate this in a piece of DIY equipment?

The solution came from [TE]’s wife, who pulled out an apple slicer. This allowed the filter to sit a little proud in the basket, allowing for an efficient draining of coffee. Simple, effective, and nearly impossible to break; that’s very good camping equipment.

Continue reading “A Drip Coffee Maker For Camping” →