2 Comments
- by: Matt Varian
April 19, 2025
The user interface of things we deal with often makes or breaks our enjoyment of using a device. [Janne] thinks so, he has an espresso machine he enjoys but the default controls were not what he was looking for and so in true hacker fashion he took what was and made it his own.
This Kickstarter-born Flair 58 is a manual espresso machine with minimal moving parts and no electronics in its default configuration. An optional preheater was available, but it felt like an afterthought. He decided to add a bit more finesse into his solution, with a sleek touchscreen display controlling a custom heater board with closed-loop temperature control, and provisions to connect an external scale scale for precise pour measurements. We’ve seen coffee maker hacks before, but this one certainly stands out for adding features absent from the machine’s initial design.
To accommodate the two custom PCBs and the touchscreen, [Janne] modified the machine’s frame. The Flair 58’s swooping curves posed a challenge, but instead of using an external enclosure, he shaped the PCBs to fit seamlessly within the machine’s structure. A wonderfully done hack given the open, exposed design of the base hardware.
Certainly head over to his site and check out this beautiful solution to improving on an existing device, and check out his other cool project based around laser fault injection. All the hardware and software for this project is freely available over on his site so if you’d like to upgrade your machine be sure to go check it out.
Great project and excellent documentation with beautiful detail shots. The only thing missing is a picture showing the complete espresso machine as it’s hard to visualize how this all fits together. Having looked up the model on Google, it’s a quite unique design.
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Wow. There’s a whole subculture there. Amazing.
Usually, I just want coffee, and my trouble is I need caffeine before I can muster the fortitude to run one of these things. I can’t imagine owning one.
The Aeropress gives me great coffee in 30 seconds of work, 90 seconds on the clock from blergh to aaahh, no muss, no fuss, a lot less counter space, and no phone app.Report comment
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