As I’ve mentioned in other channels (Discord, Instagram) there’s been a lot of progress with the Dev Rig these past weeks. I can now actually pull shots on it, and they taste good. While the direction forward is clear - get the dev rig to where I can use it as a daily driver so that I can work on the Bianca - I’ve been considering next steps. My thinking is to get started on the ESP32-C6 firmware.…

The dev rig lives! Or at least it’s kinda-sorta closed up, and it kinda-sorta works. Let’s start with a quick clip. To give a short explanation as to what you’re looking at, this is my current Dev Rig. It used to be a Rancilio Silvia, but there’s not that many of the original components left in it. It now features the following: Fluid-o-tech FG304 gear pump Digmesa Nano-brass flow meter Xidibei XDB401 pressure transducer PT100 temperature probe, drilled in to the original boiler SSD1309 OLED display Fairly shitty rotary encoder The OPV, boiler, group, steam wand and solenoid valve are stock.…

One question that has come up in the Discord lately is the project timeline. Looking at this project as someone who’s just found it, this is of course one of the most interesting questions, yet it is a hard one to answer. At the moment, and for the forseeable future, Variegated Coffee is a hobby project. The amount of time I can and am willing to commit to the project is going to depend a lot on what else is going on in my life.…

These last few weeks have been busy. Busy with life in general, but also busy with validating the EV1 revision of the APEC SoM. All in all, the validation has been a tremendous success. Thus far I’ve validated most “realistic” use cases, and the issues I’ve found have been fairly minor. In this post I’ll dig a little deeper into the issues, and go in to what the plan for the APEC SoM is.…

If you’ve been hanging around the Discord, you’ve probably heard about this already, but I’m happy to announce some changes I’m making to the All-Purpose Espresso Controller. I’m proud of the work done with the APEC, but I’ve come to the realization that I’ve had to make a lot of compromises on the design. Take the analog section as an example. The standard filters are made for temperature probes, which is great if you need them, but becomes a burden of you e.…

First up - progress has been slow these past weeks. This is a hobby-level project, and the amount of time I have to dedicate to it will naturally vary with time. Wanting to keep a cadence in the log though, I thought I’d give a short update on the Dev Rig and talk a little bit more about the Gravity. Current focus areas Getting the Dev Rig closed up OTA flashing the RP2040 via the ESP32-S3 variegated-board Restructuring the variegated-rs repository(/ies) An update on the APEC Dev Rig We all know a picture says more than a thousand words, so here’s more than two thousand words.…

First up, I wanted to loop back regarding the discussion of the Flow sensor from the last post. I was able to get ahold of two Digmesa Nano-brass flow sensors. They’re quite a bit nicer than the Gicar flow sensor. They’re a lot smaller, have a wide operating voltage (\(2.8 - 24.0 V_{DC}\)), and they’re open collector, rather than CMOS or TTL, so they’re quite easy to interface. The good people of W.…

I’m introducing this new project log, in order to offer some transperancy into the work I’m doing. This first entry is going to be a little longer, but the plan is that going forward, I’ll aim to post an entry every other week or so, summarizing what’s happening in the project and where my focus is right now. Let me know in the Discord if there’s anything in particular that you’re excited to hear more about.…