Ever since I saw Mr. Hawkinson demo the connected coffee machine, I knew I had to have it done…
The problem is we have a Nespresso EN90A by Delongui… It’s a semi automatic machine. But! It has 2 buttons! One to turn the machine on/off and the other to start/stop the coffee flow…
Add to that that the wife wants that machine and isn’t willing to go back to a simple coffee pot… And my dream starts to fade away…
Until I saw the arduino shield! That opened my eyes for a bit…
But here’s the real double trouble…
A) I live in Spain! Can’t access the shield! Arrgh…
B) I’m no programmer… Would someone be willing to help me?
Or if someone knows of a coffee maker compatible with the Nespresso capsule system… And zwave enabled!!! And sold in Europe!!! I’m all ears!
Are you comfortable (safe) to do the Arduino / Nespresso physical integration? E.g. is the power button an electronic control isolated from the mains supply, or is it physically switching the mains power; if the latter, do you know how to safely do that?
If the answer to any of the above is “I don’t know” then we should stop here. Mains power, heating elements, water (& steam) and Arduinos are a great combination to quickly kill yourself or somebody close to you if you don’t know what you are doing.
The Arduino shield is Zigbee and therefore runs in the (near) universal 2.4GHz band - no need to worry about US vs. European vs. (etc.) Zwave frequencies.
The only issues I see with you accessing one would be:
The SmartThings shop is only shipping to US & Canada - this should be
resolveable using a reshipper such as www.reship.com, etc.
Whether or not it is CE certified, etc. and thus the legalities of importing
to and operating at your location. I don’t know the status of the shield in
this regard.
I have done a few things that involve up to 230V… Always with great precaution… But I still have to find the wiring map of the machine to be on the even safer side… But since it’s an oldie machine, I’m having a hard time finding it…
Any ideas where to look?
I’ll look at the reship site… Or else I could get a friend who might be flying there to get it for me… Since this is a mid term project…
Whilst it should be “doable”, this approach would have the following drawbacks:
A Raspberry Pi is major overkill for such a task.
You would forgo all of the integration work, doco and tutorials already
in place from SmartThings for getting the shield talking to SmartThings.
Instead, you would have to learn quite a lot about Zwave to get the Pi and
SmartThings talking to each other.
In this case its not just the voltage - be very aware of the dangers that both heat and condensation add to the equation when contemplating any modifications.
I found a spare parts diagram for your machine. It looks like the mains goes directly to a switch (50 on the diagram). Do you have any experience with relays?
I’m a little late to the chat, but I thought someone might be able to benefit from my suggestion. I live in the Netherlands and I always purchase repair parts and accessories on FixPart. I do know that they are active in 10+ countries. Maybe you’re able to find the parts you need on there.
