An Open Source Coffee Machine 99
An anonymous reader writes "The Open Source Coffee Machine [video link] is a recycled coffee machine, controlled by a PC running Beremiz, and using some MicroMod CANopen I/O nodes from Peak-System. This machine have been prepared by Peak-System and Lolitech for SCS-Paris-08 exhibition. It served free coffee during four days at Peak-System's booth, and has been donated to IUT of Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, France, so that students can have fun practicing automation."
Gratis (Score:5, Funny)
Free as in coffee?
Huh (Score:5, Funny)
I thought a open source coffee maker would be running on Java
Re:Huh (Score:5, Funny)
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She'd be naked, petrified and trembling!
Now all they need to do is design an open source hot grits machine to compliment it.
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Did anyone else read the message and think "Open Source Coffin Machine"?
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Re:Huh (Score:4, Funny)
"No..but, I did notice that those were awfully small cups of coffee...small cups that weren't even very full."
It's open source, you can change that.;-)
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I thought a open source coffee maker would be running on Java
NetBSD, NetBSD - like your toaster [slashdot.org]...
Redundant (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure "push button on Mr. Coffee" is open source already.
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You've clearly never seen one of these [myflavia.com].
We got them in our office this year. When one broke down (after two days) they had two technicians in working on it for half a day until they just replaced it. When it was open, it had a ridiculous amount of stuff which looks more like it belongs inside of a computer than a coffee maker. It really is a ridiculously over-engineered thing, and it uses co
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Never underestimate how much complexity and cost people will put into the pursuit of coffee.
Which I find very strange, since some of the best coffee comes out of one of the simplest devices, a coffee percolator [wikipedia.org]. Or for you espresso lovers, the Moka Pot [wikipedia.org].
There's some engineering axiom about this which I can't think of now, but it basically boils down to Occam's Razor: All things being equal, the simplest solution is usually the best.
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It really is a ridiculously over-engineered thing, and it uses coffee in single-pack mylar bags with lots of plastic and other junk.
Those types of coffee machine are much more profitable than ones that take coffee beans and grind them because the supplies are single source.
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[1] they get temperature, shot size, dose grind and tamp wrong. And they are extremely hard to clean.
LoLi (Score:3, Funny)
I for one was extremely confused.
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Re:LoLi (Score:5, Informative)
Re:LoLi (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks for the NSFW tag there. Much appreciated. Now when I'm asked why I was checking out that page on wikipedia, I'll have to explain what slashdot is, what an open source coffee maker is, what a lolcat is, and what icanhascheezburger.com is to justify why I went there on company time. Should be fun.
Oodaloop's boss: I am interested in your newsletter concerning those topics and would like to learn more.
Re:LoLi (Score:5, Funny)
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What are you talking about?
Nothing NSFW in that link. Unless Wikipedia has a rotating image in the upper right corner, all I saw was a bunch of kids in poofy "granny" undies. Looked like late 19th, early 20th century bathing suits. About as UNsexy as you can get. What in the world was NSFW about that?
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You might not have a problem with it, but many others may. Especially in the overly-sensitive corporate world.
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Boss may think you are now a pedo. Not safe for your life position more than anything.
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Well, I took the safe bet and browsed the article using an encrypted Tor connection.
Boss ain't gonna know JACK about that article.
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That's simple..
A popup appeared and I clicked on it. Then I started clicking on everything I could see. That's what you are supposed to do right? Click on everything?
Oh and what did it mean when It asked to install SmitFraud and Weatherbug?
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why would you click on a link you know nothing about at work? doubly so when you know your workplace monitors your internet usage?
making the excuse that you "assumed" the link was safe because they didn't explicitly say NSFW is also incorrect so please do not include that in your answer.
dude.
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ok. that didn't address my question. i'll try again posing it in a different way.
1. you know that your employer monitors your internet usage.
2. you saw a link on slashdot; wanted to click on said link but were not sure of its contents.
3. you chose to click on the link anyway.
4. the contents of the page were questionable in your eyes.
5. you posted on slashdot sarcastically thanking the parent (ie. bitching) that you'd have to answer to your employer as to the contents of the link in question.
given these ev
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*snerk*
This is the best thing that I've read all day! Thanks for the laughs!
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Well if you get fired, at least you'll have more time to spend on /b/
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Firewalled (Score:2)
I'm at work and can't access the site, and TFA is mighty short on details. Coffee makers are pretty generic for the most part, and have been around long enough that any patents on their tech would have long ago run out.
And coffee makers are decidedly low tech, even moreso than the old fashioned percolators that you can brew coffee on a stovetop or camp fire with. It's simply a heating element that heats the water which runs through the coffee.
So would someone with access to the site please tell me what I'm
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This isn't a coffee pot, it's a bit machine with a touch-screen LCD (with only 1 button on the screen, apparently) that has tubes and containers and fills a single cup half full at a time.
What you're missing here is that this is just some geeky project that nobody cares about except the creators.
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Gee, geeks put ridiculous amount of technology into the problem of making a cup of coffee. Film at 11.
I mean, when web cams first came out, people were putting them next to coffee machines [cam.ac.uk] to be able to know if there's a pot on.
This isn't exactly a new phenomenon. :-P
Cheers
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You are missing me trying to figure out what is open about it. I get Beremiz but the software on the Peak-System doesn't appear to be, at least not all of it. I think maybe the firmware for the IO modules is but I'm not positive.
As for the machine itself, it is more along the lines of a commercial coffee vending machine. Touch a screeen to, I assume, pick the drink you want, and a PC, via IO boards, starts and stops the appropriate field devices to fill the cup.
It would be nice to see some openness come to
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I do find it puzzling why You would want a null modem cable for CANopen since it runs on EIA-485 (also know as RS-485).
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Many of them are, I'll add Profibus, but Allen Bradley is very popular in the US and they are still selling a lot of proprietary IO.
I don't want a null modem cable at the moment, but if it was 1998 and I wanted to connect my PC's serial port to a SLC5/03 I'd need a null modem cable, only Allen Bradley didn't call it a null modem cable they called it a 1747-CP3 and they wanted something like $200 for it.
I recall carrying around pinout diagrams for half the cables in their catalog just in case I ever ran into
Re:Firewalled (Score:4, Funny)
So would someone with access to the site please tell me what I'm missing? Thanks.
TFA is a video showing an attempt at building a Nutrimatic dispenser to produce a cup of coffea. Instead, it invariably produces a concotion that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee.
Not really my cup of tea.
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Why? (Score:5, Funny)
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"why build a convoluted contraption to do something so simple?"
Cause you can!
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It's not the home type machine. This looks more like the vending machine that you see in a public place where you put in money and select the type of coffee. the machine dispences a paper cup and then makes one cup of coffee, trea, hot chocolate or whatver.
The real purpose of the machine is to reach people how to write software that controls machines. it purposly uses some interface that are used on factory floors
They could have used as a teaching device a machine that bends tubing to make automotive or
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An open source potato peeler would be awesome if I could just pull some potatoes out of a bag and put them in a chute and forget about it. No sense getting your hands dirty peeling taters.
Also, the coffee machine should be piped into the water system so all I need to do is add coffee. If I can somehow skip the shopping for coffee, putting it in the chute part and actually having to press a button, then I'd be even more pleased. I just want to wake up and drink my coffee. The same applies to cereal (or o
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An open source potato peeler would be awesome if I could just pull some potatoes out of a bag and put them in a chute and forget about it. No sense getting your hands dirty peeling taters.
Why peel potatos? The peels are delicious, and that's where most of the vitamins are. Just pop out the eyes, chop, and cook.
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I never said anything about throwing them out. ;) In fact, I used to steal the peels out of my Mom's strainer when she would peel the potatoes for mashing.
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that's where most of the vitamins are
And pesticides. Potatoes are cleverly disguised (and delicious) junk food anyway (they turn to sugar in your stomach), no need to eat them for vitamins.
Sweet potatoes, though. Those are good eats.
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Look, along with porn, coffee machines have been driving our network tech for some time: Trojan Room Coffee Pot [cam.ac.uk].
Caffine-Related Tech (Score:3, Interesting)
Reminds me of the world's first webcam [cam.ac.uk] at Cambridge University.
Is it BSD or GPL? (Score:2)
If GPL, I'm not sure they want the modified source my body expels after drinking...
Well... (Score:2, Interesting)
That's one heck of a feedback loop... (Score:4, Funny)
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Not truly open source (Score:3, Funny)
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Coffee beans aren't proprietary. Unless, of course, they've bben genetically engineered by Monsanto. AFAIK all coffee beans are free (as in speech).
Magic Steps (Score:2)
1) Make Automatic Coffee Maker
2) Push Button
3) Drink Coffee
4) ????
5) HYPER!!!!!!
Can it run on HTCPCP/1.0? (Score:2)
In other words, the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol [ietf.org]?
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"RFC 2324 HTCPCP/1.0 1 April 1998
Putting coffee grounds into Internet plumbing may result in clogged
plumbing, which would entail the services of an Internet Plumber
[PLUMB], who would, in turn, require an Internet Plumber's Helper."
I KNEW it! The Internet Is a bunch of tubes! He was right!
OMG! WFT! The bastards!
Recycled coffee (Score:1)
Yum.
Will it be compliant to the rfc? (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2324.txt [ietf.org]
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Woooooooooooooooooooooooooosh
That's the sound of a freight train of a joke.
RFC 2324 (Score:1)
For Some Reason... (Score:2, Funny)
Recycled coffee? (Score:3, Funny)
You missed the point (Score:1)
This isn't about coffee.
It's about industrial automation, specifically replacing PLCs (programmable logic controllers), programmed with horrible languages (think assembler but more cumbersome and interpreted), with PCs running an open source version of those same horrible languages.
Since, among other things, I program PLCs for a living, I'd love replacing them altogether with PC based controls (the customers don't usually want to, due to the perceived reliability of PLCs), though I don't see the point of us
Translucent? (Score:2)
Seeing this makes me want a coffee machine which has translucent or transparent sides so that you can see what it is doing inside. That would be a step closer to the Geek's dream coffee maker.
Coffee??? TEA!! (Score:1)
What about Open Standards? (Score:2)
Does it use the ESE Open Standard Coffee Pods though?
http://www.1stincoffee.com/illy-pods.htm [1stincoffee.com]
ho hum (Score:2)
Call me when they open source a milkshake machine.
Beremiz (Score:1)
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Yeah, I was impressed as well. I don't work in PLC, but I sure hope to design some low cost and open automated hardware at some point. I do hang out in some related forums.
For anybody interested in learning more about programmable logic controllers you might want to try
http://www.control.com/ [control.com]
Which looks like it uses an older version of Slashcode.
or
http://www.plctalk.net/ [plctalk.net]
There is also a nice intro tutorial on ladder logic and PLCs in general under the "PLC Basics" sidebar at
http://www.plcdev.com/ [plcdev.com]
So while I'v
It ONLY makes coffee? (Score:2)
I can't wait to get me one of those.
I've seen this before... (Score:2)
This looks like a modern version of the Commocoffee 64 [null.org].
Taking technology serious (Score:2)
A computerised coffeemaker? I know there is a trend to put computers into everything from toilet paper to toothpaste, but just how far will it be pushed before somebody spots the utter idiocy of it?
I suppose it is harmless enough as such, but I can't help thinking that we should try taking the whole issue of technology and what we use it for just a little bit more serious. Then again, this kind of thing will probably die out in todays economical conditions, leaving the world slightly better.
I am not attacki