Hack Correlation

About a year ago I bought a new automatic coffee machine to replace the aging Saeco. This is a Philips machine, 3200 series, which actually is a pretty close match to the Saeco. Not a surprise, since Philips is the parent company of Saeco, while Saeco is the parent company of Gaggia. Which means some parts could be interchangeable. I waited for about one year to see if any problems develop with the machine, but so far it has been pretty reliable. This post will aim to compare the old and the new machine and figure out how to automate it. Just click on the Saeco label or search this blog to see the old teardown, which thousands of people have already read. There will be plenty of pictures after the subjective review. Disclaimer : I don't work for Philips or any other coffee company, this is just a hobby.  Software and usability The new machine is much better in terms of software and friendliness. While the old one used to dump ground coffee whenever it felt something wrong, the new...

My old post on the Saeco Talea Giro machine teardown  (including deprecated one ) has had tremendous success and I frequently get questions on how to fix this or that. I am no specialist on this stuff but I've managed to keep my unit running after it was used in an office environment (>50000 coffees). So for me it's mostly guesswork and some logic, but I'll display this so that you can help figure out the problem with your own unit. I'll try to make this accessible to non-technical people, let me know if some idioms are too advanced. I will try to update this guide with usual questions, but this is not a replacement for professional servicing. Before troubleshooting  make sure that the unit is  cleaned and descaled  and has enough water. Use the manual for this, each unit is different. Also, try turn the unit off and on, perhaps leaving it 1h undisturbed. This works around some of the bugs in software (firmware). Learn the sounds of the machine and try t...

This project is taking longer than anticipated even though it was supposed to be something simple. I will publish a schematic of the complete circuit in the near future (this year) but in the meantime there is still the slow process of troubleshooting. Safety considerations: the complete circuit is not isolated from mains so testing is pretty critical. I have been feeding 3.6V to test the low-voltage part but in the end it will have to be hooked up to 220V the boiler / water heater can only take a limited amount of pressure. If the thermistor is not properly calibrated in software there is the risk of a scalding hot water explosion With that being said there is some small but steady progress being done. The MSP430 has a some strange power requirements that are not properly documented. The VCC supply  needs to rise with >1V/ms otherwise it gets into an undefined state. That undefined state might also mean that some GPIOs are high, causing catastrophical failure. C...