When the folks at Zipwhip heard that the Raspberry Pi team was moving to a new office, they decided to combine their cloud-based texting service with the power of Pi as a gift to the Pi crew: the world’s first Raspberry Pi-powered, cloud texting-enabled espresso machine, called Textpresso. Yes, that’s right: you can text your coffee order to the machine, and it’ll text you back when your drink is ready. They built it, tested it, shipped it to the Pi offices, and then shared their full how-to with the rest of us caffeine enthusiasts. The machine reportedly works brilliantly, though the only catch is remembering to always have an empty cup on the tray, lest your double shot end up on the carpet.
The Zipwhip team made a custom circuit board to interface between the Raspberry Pi and the main board of a De’Longhi espresso machine. They provide the Eagle files so you can get your own printed. They also use three optocouplers to communicate info from the machine to the Raspberry Pi using a beam of light. To make your own, check out Zipwhip’s full how-to, as well as the short video they made to accompany the build:
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