RoboGaggia makes espresso coffee all by itself

[Nicholas DiPatri] really likes his Gaggia Pro. It's an amazing espresso machine, but it's also a little fiddly and requires a lot of manual attention to brew a cup. As an engineer, he set about tweaking the machine to run with a little less oversight. Enter RoboGaggia.

Stock, the Gaggia Pro requires regular water refills. The coffee-thirsty user should also wait for the brew heater to come up to temperature before hitting the Go button. Knowing the weight of the coffee in the machine is also key to getting a good brew. Steaming should also be done by hand. All in all a lot of work.

[Nicholas]'s goal was to get the machine to a point where he could fill it with freshly ground coffee, press a button and walk away. When it returns, the machine should be ready for steam. To achieve this, he has endeavored to equip the Gaggia Pro with modern and sophisticated equipment. He scored a scale that sits in the drip tray, PID temperature controllers, a flow controller to manage the extraction profile, and an auto-fill water reservoir. The entire brewing process is done under microcontroller control, with live telemetry also sent to Adafruit.io for logging.

This is by no means a lightweight project, but [Nicholas] has shared some files on Github for the curious. However, if you're in love with your Italian espresso machine and don't want to change, this might just be the kit you need to end your morning headaches. After all, when we need coffee, we're at the bottom of a complicated chemical processing plant. Video after the break.