This is the first project I'm posting on Hackaday. I'm a software guy, so I usually don't have projects involving hardware. However with the latest movement on IoT I felt compelled to give it a try. For this first project I started by making "smart" a not so smart coffee machine. I used a framework hype, it's pretty much like boost for C++, but for mesh networks. It's cool because it speeds up the development time and works with any technology available either online or offline. It's a great solution when you have to deal with communications and you don't really understand about networks.

I have used the hype framework in the past but for mobile apps. Therefore I took a couple of hours to code for the ESP32 including the installation of the toolchains and their SDK. For new users this can take a bit more, but either way it saves you a lot of development time and issues.

So this idea came into my mind every time I woke up in the morning and I had to put the coffee capsule, wait around one minute while the coffee machine heated up and then I could take my coffee mug. I hated this, because I started to feel that I was loosing a minute of my life where I couldn't do anything but wait impatiently.

While waiting, I wondered; "if only I could press this button remotely", and suddenly it struck me "I could do that by using a chat application and text my coffee machine". This would be as functional as it would be very stylish.

For "Hype Your Espresso", my goal was to control my coffee machine from a distance. The way I chose to control it, was by texting the machine to make it start and stop pouring the coffee. For the chat application I've used the Hype Chat Demo.

Coffee Machine Source Code

Coffee Machine Demo GIF

Hype Chat Demo Mobile App (iOS, Android)

If you noticed on the GIFs, I’m asking for a coffee using Bluetooth, but you configured your ESP32 for WiFi. Isn't this cool?

I hope you have on of those fully automatic machines, this way you can just ask for the coffee and it’s done!

For future improvements, I'm thinking on developing my own mobile phone app from scratch or I can use another ESP32 with a push button. Either way I'm pretty happy with this weekend project I hope you guys like it. If you want to replicate this work and you have some questions please let me know!