Espresso Machine on Steroids
Taking a standard espresso machine and retrofitting it with a custom controller for PID temperature regulation, pressure profiling, and shot timing — because good coffee deserves real-time firmware.
Stock espresso machines in this price range control temperature with a simple thermostat: on past a threshold, off below it, with a swing wide enough to shift extraction noticeably from shot to shot. The retrofit replaces that with closed-loop PID control reading the boiler temperature directly, aiming to hold within a much tighter band through the whole shot.
Pressure profiling is the harder half — shaping the pump pressure over the course of the shot instead of just running it flat out, which is where a lot of the flavor difference between "espresso" and "good espresso" seems to live. Shot timing ties it together: logging temperature, pressure, and flow against time, mostly so I have actual data instead of a vague sense that today's shot was better than yesterday's.
Status: in progress, and the espresso is still mediocre — which at least means the bottleneck probably isn't the firmware anymore.