Smart Espresso Machine Modifications
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The Rancilio Silvia is a home espresso maker popular with people who like to take things apart. When you open it up, you find no printed circuit boards with tightly embedded components. Instead, you find switches, plugable wires, and some simple sensing elements. This makes it a great platform for hacking. Adding more sophisticated temperature control with a PID controller is a popular modification. I wanted to take it a step further and add a web interface to control the machine and monitor its status. This project is the result of that effort. The resulting system allows for programmable shot profiles, live temperature monitoring, automated maintenance tasks, and voice control through Alexa. PID control, relay operation, and sensor reading are handled by a microcontroller and the scheduling, web interface and Alexa integration are handled by a Raspberry Pi.