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Open source espresso machine is one delicious rabbit hole inside another
- kevingadd 4y agoFor those interested in the subject, James Hoffmann's video on the ZPM espresso machine may be interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKA2COJRt6M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKA2COJRt6M To summarize, the ZPM was sort of a DIY espresso machine that turned into a kickstarter project to deliver a product. It ended up failing, but the effort informed a lot of stuff that came after.
- boomskats 4y agoAFAIK John Buckman (who used to head the EFF) bought the rights to the failed ZPM tech when he started Decent Espresso.
- ubermonkey 4y agoHoffmann is great. He's the Alton Brown of coffee. That metaphor popped up for me in another context recently, too, as I found the usual host of the FortNine motorcycle channel, Ryan, to be the Alton Brown of motorcycles. Lots of people watch his videos that don't even ride because of his nerdy enthusiasm and excellent explanations about aspects of motorcycles and motorcycling.
- matharmin 4y agoIt's mentioned in the article, but the Gaggiuino project is a really nice base if you like tinkering with this kind of stuff. You start with the chassis and components of an existing machine, and just add temperature, pressure and/or flow control.
- dfxm12 4y agoI think it's a great introduction into hacking for people who might not find it otherwise. I love the idea of coffee nerds realizing that this stuff (working with small PCBs, hacking cases, wiring, etc.) isn't really as intimidating as it might seem. Hopefully tomorrow, someone inspired by this can get more out of a cheaper grinder, then after that, who know what?
- lostlogin 4y agoI love my coffee and spend way too much money on espresso equipment - my setup is perfect. I like these threads a lot, but dream of the open source bread maker for sourdough bread. I’ve been collecting bread makers from junk stores and have a fleet of ESPs. I have no idea what I’m doing but it’s getting dangerously close to having to do it myself.
- xrayarx 4y agoMaybe you care to share your setup?
- lostlogin 4y agoFor the coffee is a Faema E61 Legend. I was shopping for parts for a ‘64 model and the parts added up to more than a new reproduction one. For finding is Mazzer Robur I restored. It’s massive. I love all their models but I can’t go past the air vents on the side, and maybe one day I’ll need to grind a years coffee in a day. I doubt it. I roast my beans with a Bosch heat gun (my superior Orzito died) in an old colander.
- the_third_wave 4y agoTry a cheap popcorn popper - more or less a heat gun with an aluminium cup attached. I've used one for roasting coffee with good results. The thing keeps the beans in motion while roasting them, all you have to do is switch it on and off at the right moment.
- chongli 4y agoThat’s pretty awesome! I have a Lelit MaraX and a Niche Zero. I really want to get a lever machine next, but it’ll be awhile before it’s in the budget. Besides, I’m still learning how to use this current setup, having had it for a year and change.
- lostlogin 4y agoI’d like a lever action too - I’d love a Faema Urania, similar but better styling to what I have. I love the e61 group head though.
- traceroute66 4y agoWhat would be even more delicious is if people could be bothered to use the search function on HN prior to posting.... Original post, 120 comments, here ... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35320729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35320729 Re-post, 4 comments, here ... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35347638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35347638
- realworldperson 4y ago[dead]
- ben7799 4y agoExactly.. this submission is just Ars Technica doing a copy-paste of the original source and wrapping it in ads. Ars has fallen a long, long way since they were bought by Conde Nast. Almost every article they put out is this garbage these days. Most of their original content is them sending someone to auto manufacturers junkets to drive cars and then regurgitate the manufacturer's marketing material.
- naunauyoh 4y agoWhenever I stumble on the DIYs for "automatic" Espresso machines, I always wonder if the manual machines (think La Pavoni or Olympia) are not just simpler to use for controlling pressure. Obviously, then you're still missing temp control. I guess I just like more simple stuff
- ReptileMan 4y agoMy experience with espresso - the machine is less important than the grinder.
- whitehexagon 4y agoI was lucky enough to get to play with a few coffee grinders recently, and also came to this conclusion. I now have an old commercial on-demand grinder with new burrs and the extraction and crema are a huge leap above my old pro-sumer model.
- artemonster 4y agoWhich one you have and which one you had?
- whitehexagon 4y agoSage to Cunill tran? and now a Compak OD. The electronics are a bit faulty (forgets settings) and I had to invent a replacement missing hopper, but very pleased with the shots.
- ubermonkey 4y agoI dunno. certainly there's a point of diminishing returns above, say, $1500 on the machine, but there's a host of fantastic grinders at $500 to $700 that do a GREAT and consistent job with espresso. If you're handy and don't mind fiddling, you can get by at even lower levels (say, $200).
- sfmike 4y agoagreed, having bought amazing beans from third waves and use on amazing machines and it pulls like a pool of water with dark flocculation
- koito17 4y agoDoes it implement HTCPCP? If not, are patches welcome? :D
- tecleandor 4y agoWell, that'd be easy! If it's "just" an espresso machine, you wouldn't even need to support the 'Accept-Additions' headers! :D
- faizshah 4y agoThis is probably a dumb question but what makes plastics or metals food grade? I ask because I want to know if DIYing kitchen gadgets like this is somehow unsafe or is it possible to build food grade gadgets yourself?
- Gigachad 4y agoArguably nothing. They all leach chemicals in your food. We just don't know too much about what they do.
- e12e 4y agoEh, you're better off with an iron pot than a lead pot, for example?
- hkt 4y agoThere's an overview here that references the (many) standards involved: https://www.bpf.co.uk/packaging/plastic-packaging-safety.aspx https://www.bpf.co.uk/packaging/plastic-packaging-safety.asp... To the best of my knowledge it is less about leaching chemicals out of plastic as safety precautions. There's a bit in there about BPAs (endocrine disruptors) though.
- elif 4y agoIt took us decades of use to understand the harms of bpa, which are still disputed by 'industry science's despite the existing research. For instance right now we are largely replacing baking plastics and nonstick coatings with silicon because it is known not to leech.. but now we are finding that silicon breaks down after 200-1000 baking cycles. There isn't any conclusive data to say when it becomes unsafe, if it does at all.. All that to say, if a plastic was designed to melt immediately upon contact with a heating element and bind to the first thing it touches... I'm not using it for tea.
- dragontamer 4y ago> It took us decades of use to understand the harms of bpa, which are still disputed by 'industry science's despite the existing research. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/questions-answers-bisphenol-bpa-use-food-contact-applications https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/questions-... > Yes. Based on FDA's ongoing safety review of scientific evidence, the available information continues to support the safety of BPA for the currently approved uses in food containers and packaging. People are exposed to low levels of BPA because, like many packaging components, very small amounts of BPA may migrate from the food packaging into foods or beverages. Studies pursued by FDA's National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR) have shown no effects of BPA from low-dose exposure. ------- FDA isn't "industry", they're the government regulators in charge of food safety of the USA. So we swapped from one plastic (BPA) with a century of research to other plastics with no research. They're all going to "leach" into our foods because when food comes in contact with molecules, it will absorb those molecules. If you cook food in an iron pan, the food will have more iron content. If you cook food in a copper pan, the food will have more copper content. Its just how things work. The question of safety is about studying the effects of iron, copper, or... BPA. And as far as I can tell, only low quality alternative-medicine journals seem to ever have anything to say about BPA.
- e12e 4y agoDoesn't look like it is actually open source, given: > Or you could do what Norm Sohl did and build a highly configurable machine out of open source hardware plans and the thermal guts of an Espresso Gaggia. (My emphasis)
- martin_a 4y agoWhere does open source start and end? You can buy almost all parts for the small Gaggia machines online. A complete group costs around 50 Euro, I think, and you can do with that whatever you want. Would you prefer CNC milling it by yourself, based on some plans?
- adql 4y agoWell, open hardware design would have that, but not exactly be the practical one if you can buy actual ready made part for cheaper than CNCing it. Difference is really that the open design could be repeated way before design based on existing part would go out of produciton.
- tomatotomato37 4y agoHacking together a pressurized steam vessel is like DIY repairing a garage door; you don't.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- scrappyjoe 4y agoI was expecting this to be about mugsy, the open source coffee maker I kickstarter backed in 2018. Unfortunately the rabbit hole there is the endless stream of very positive enhancement updates to a product that is shipping _in the next few days_ for the last 5 years. Like, cmon man, just admit defeat. Rant over. Yes, I’m bitter. Edit: to be clear, it’s not the product I want anymore. I just need closure.
- AndrewOMartin 4y agoBrian Stimpson: It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand. Clockwise (1986) - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090852/quotes/qt0177777 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090852/quotes/qt0177777
- tcrenshaw 4y agoI was so excited for mugsy when it was first announced. I check back in every year or so only to be shocked he's still chugging away. I can't imagine there are many people that still expect him to deliver
- futurecat 4y agoI love how the coffee enthusiasts scene is more and more looking like the audiophile scene.
- samwillis 4y agoMy best mate from uni was a massive audiophile, he had the most insane set of home built kit in our house. Now in our mid thirties he's become a massive coffee enthusiast, the attention to detail making coffee is brilliant. It's really good coffee! Immediately sent this post to him, I'm sure his wife won't be pleased to see the inevitable outcome...
- futurecat 4y agoI don’t share the same attention to details and I love passionate people spending time on improving their craft / setups. Great vibe :)
- atoav 4y agoTrue. But as an audio engineer I have to say, that just because audiophiles are naive and gullible, doesn't mean there are no other, real, physical aspects that affect actual sound and reproducability. Same for Espresso. A PID that keeps the brewing temperature steady is superior to a thermostat where the temperature ramps up and down constantly and your brewing temperature depends on experience or luck (people who know their machine would call this "temperature surfing" because you will have to wait for the thermostat to switch on). To which degree brewing temperature affects the result can be discussed, but this could be tested quite easily. So if you are a coffee afficionado, the number one reason you would like to have a PID is probably convenience. One variable less to care about if you wanna get reproducably (good) results. I'd also prefer the faders of my mixing desk to keep their levels where I set them instead of fluctuating around.
- futurecat 4y agoI own a vintage hifi setup (NAD3020 + AudioReference HR50) that costed me a few hundred bucks. I own a espresso machine that is a clone of the Lelit PL41 with PID and my grinder is a Barazza Encore with M2 burr. My comment came from a place of love. I’m happy to see people going the extra mile. Myself, I just want to be chill at home and aim for a balanced providing me joy without headaches. But I’m weird. Example: I love playing vinyls not because it sounds better but because it lacks dynamics and I find that… relaxing!
- azubinski 4y agoIt is not very clear what in the processes of the coffee machine is closed source. And it is not very clear why disassemble the coffee machine to assemble another coffee machine that is no different from other coffee machines. It's all definitely funny. But it's not entirely clear why.
- dukeofdoom 4y agoBest coffee I had was in Hawaii. In two different coffee shops. After spending 30k on an espresso machine, it's the beans that matter the most.
- handwarmers 4y agoAwesome stuff but be careful when working with boilers/pressurized containers - these things can result in no joke burns / explosions. Also, if you have mostly done low voltage electronics hacking, you might be missing some safety habits required in working with 120V/220V devices. Don't let this stop you, but don't rush the process :)
- jmholla 4y agoDo you have any recommendations for reading up on those safety habits?
- Reason077 4y agoThis looks really cool! But rather than building from scratch or making extensive hardware modifications, it makes me wonder if anyone has tried developing open-source firmware for existing espresso machines? I have a Delonghi bean-to-cup machine. It's quite capable of making decent coffee but also has some unfortunate software behaviours that result in inconsistent output. Most annoyingly, it gives extremely limited control over grind time and thus the quantity of grounds in each shot. If the hopper runs out of beans or you switch to a different type of beans, it gets confused and tries to adjust the grind time on it's own, usually overcompensating and resulting in either too much coffee in the shot (pump struggles to express anything) or too little (thin, bitter, over-extracted shot). If I could control grind time precicely, it would hugely improve the consistency my coffee. I could set up a profile for each type of bean that I use and fine-tune my shots. Has anyone tried to hack or customise software on Delonghi (or any other) bean-to-cup machine? Any projects out there to do this?
- orangepurple 4y agoI ripped out the vast majority of the internal wiring and all of the temperature sensors inside the Delonghi EC155 and replaced it with an eBay PID controller, solid state relay (SSR), and thermocouple for $25. It is tuned nearly perfectly with only 1 degree of overshoot most of the time. It works very well. I left the switch for the pump but nothing else. It can make espresso but I only use it for steam these days. Bean origin and processing matters a lot but most people don't process beans themselves so people generally have to trust others for this step. However, you will have to grind your own beans. Grind fineness is by far the most important variable to control. The correct grind fineness is determined by achieving an appropriate flow rate given a valid pressure profile (typically 9 bars continuous). The performance of any espresso machine is a direct consequence of the fineness and consistency of the grind. No machine can make up for a poor grind. A crappy machine can often make good espresso if the grind is good. Invest heavily in a good grinder. I do not like to extra spend money for electronics that I could never maintain or fix myself, so I opted for a manual grinder with premium conical burrs. I make espresso with an Espresso Forge (https://espressoforge.com/ https://espressoforge.com/) which effectively has no moving parts, electronics, and only food grade metal. Just a piston that you ram in by hand.
- 404mm 4y agoIt looks like a 3d printer converted to a coffee maker :D Seriously now, I appreciate the effort. We need this!!
- jcims 4y agoI build a fully automated 5g reflux still at the outset of the pandemic. Beyond the initial charge of the boiler, swapping jars and cleanup, everything was automated. I even had a load cell to pause the boiler when either the jar was removed or reached a certain weight so that was ready for a robot arm or belt. It's an extremely rewarding process to automate a physical plant like that because so many things can go wrong and there are so many edge cases, weird feedback loops and idiosyncracies of equipment that isn't obvious until you try it with another thing. I used nodered on a raspberry pi for all of the brains, mqtt for coordination and a swarm of nodeedu running tasmota for all of the I/O. The main challenge is not getting too comfortable and starting to take shortcuts with safety. Pressure vessels, high voltage switching, fumes and flammable gases/liquids can ruin your day.
- theknocker 4y ago[dead]
- sfmike 4y agothis gives me idea you could take a picopresso and mod it for different pressure levels and sort of superize it
- Hippocrates 4y agoFor anyone interested in this sort of thing (like me), the Decent DE1 Espresso machine is a well-engineered, cafe quality, open-source machine that you can buy. There is a small community working on various software apps around it. The machine is controlled through open BLE comms. All the control software AFAIK is OSS and tinkerable. The machine itself is top notch, and in my espresso-nerd opinion, beats anything on the market except in appearance and "analogeness". So if you like espresso and hacking on software, check it out.
- asciimike 4y agoIs there a better guide than the app source code? I can't seem to wrap my head around the BLE comms aspect (e.g. how it integrates with scales or the Smart Espresso Profiler app).
- Hippocrates 4y agohttps://github.com/jeffsf/pyDE1 https://github.com/jeffsf/pyDE1 this is a pretty complete python implementation covering the BLE APIs including scales. It's way more approachable than the TCL Android app. Some more info on the protocol here: https://3.basecamp.com/3671212/buckets/7351439/documents/4994850262 https://3.basecamp.com/3671212/buckets/7351439/documents/499... I don't think there are any better "formal" docs.