Espresso fanatic and Android engineer Nicholas DiPatri has taken it upon himself to improve a Gaggia Professional espresso machine to the max — creating the “RoboGaggia” in a quest for the proper cup of joe.
“The Gaggia Professional is an incredible Espresso machine out of the field, however it requires lots of handbook steps involving measuring weight and time, clicking buttons and the result’s ‘fairly good espresso,'” DiPatri explains. “[Most] rather more refined and costly machines do most of this for you… AND they do fancy further issues like modulate the brew stress and temperature dynamically to verify the espresso is being extracted at a constant circulation fee, temperature, and time. My purpose was to enhance the Gaggia to attain all of those targets.”
The RoboGaggia goes past a easy performance improve, although. Leaning on his expertise as an Android engineer, DiPatri makes use of a Particle Argon’s Wi-Fi connectivity so as to add real-time telemetry to the low-cost espresso machine — permitting for particulars together with circulation fee, water temperature, stress, extracted weight, and extra to be revealed over a community and analyzed looking for that excellent brew.
On the extra instantly sensible aspect, the RoboGaggia automates lots of the steps which had been beforehand handbook on the inventory machine. There is a scale built-in into the drip tray for automated measurement, there is a PID-based flow-rate controller, an auto-fill water reservoir, a totally automated brew course of, a cool-down system for alternating between brewing and steaming with out over-stressing the only boiler, and even an automatic cleansing function.
The construct features a customized PCB for the management system and 3D-printed modifications for the machine itself. (📷: Nicholas DiPatri)
“This challenge includes modifying a superbly secure business espresso machine. These modifications completely make your espresso machine much less secure,” DiPatri admits. “It includes each water and electrical energy. Please proceed at your individual danger. It is a harmful modification! In case you do not do it proper, individuals will die over a cup of espresso!”
The construct stands on the shoulders of earlier efforts to improve machines from the identical producer, specifically the Gagguino challenge — an effort to switch sufficient of the electronics inside a Gaggia Traditional or Traditional Professional to have it go toe-to-toe with professional-grade machines at a significantly larger price ticket.
For these not postpone by DiPatri’s warnings, full particulars can be found on the challenge’s GitHub repository alongside 3D-printable recordsdata, circuit board designs, and supply code underneath the permissive Apache 2.0 license.
