Hacking the Tassimo single-serve coffee machine

If you like coffee and a little cryptanalysis in the morning, here’s a really interesting hack-in-progress: figuring out the coding used to program beverages in the Tassimo coffee machine.

Chris R. Chapman writes:

I’ve been working on reverse-engineering the Braun Tassimo T1200/T1400 hot beverage system from its barcoded T-DISC brewing pods.

The barcodes are used to “program” the machine to make a particular beverage using a specific amount of water at a particular temperature and for a certain duration of time. My efforts have been directed at discovering a “map” between the barcodes and how the machine controls its brewing processes.

I haven’t been entirely successful yet – I’ve managed to decode the barcodes, and have run some experiments to try and surface some patterns – no dice!

Chris receives bonus points for using the infamous :CueCat to read in the barcodes placed on the top of each brewing pod. While he hasn’t yet been able to determine exactly what the program controls, it does look like each program is composed of a 6 digit decimal number.

What does it mean? The future of DIY programmable coffee pods needs your help.

Hacking the Tassimo single-serve coffee machine – [via] Link