Just lately, [Samuel Leeuwenburg] received his paws on a Francis! Francis! X1 (sure, that’s the identify) espresso machine. That is the espresso machine that’s largely well-known for having been in a whole lot of large TV reveals within the Nineties. Within the early 2000s, the X1 even turned a fairly good espresso machine after the producer did some extra tinkering with it, together with altering the boiler materials, upgrading the pump, and so on.
Within the case of the second-hand, however hardly ever used, machine that [Samuel] received, the machine nonetheless seemed fairly good, however its efficiency was fairly abysmal. After popping the machine open the boiler turned out to be just about filled with scale. Reasonably than simply cleansing it, the boiler was upgraded to a brass model for higher warmth retention and different perks.
Extra after the break…
One of the best a part of this comparatively easy machine might be that it has been reverse-engineered, making modding it very simple. After some considering, [Samuel] determined to tug the very fundamental controller PCB and substitute it with one thing able to tighter temperature management. This was a customized PCB that includes the compulsory Raspberry Pi Pico together with a MAX3185 for water temperature measurement. The Pico needed to be programmed to deal with heater management obligation. There’s even an HTTP API on the WiFi-enabled Pico board.
Sadly, the all-metal enclosure additionally makes for an ideal Faraday cage, placing an finish to distant automation goals for now, a minimum of. With the machine buttoned up, [Samuel] remembered that the first job of an espresso machine is to make espresso, which it’s now, luckily, much more able to than earlier than the surgical procedure, and which requires you to be current on the machine anyway.
Because of [Milo] for the tip.
