Rick's b.log - entry 2025/03/03

Spring has finally sprung

I am currently working an hour earlier and doing the job of multiple people, so I'm pretty shattered right now. The good thing about starting earlier is you get to bugger off home earlier. I have sat out and enjoyed the sun for a good quarter hour already, after having swung by the shop for some marge (oops, I forgot!) and it's still about ten minutes before my normal coming-home time.

Here are some daffodils. Not bright and sunny because I didn't think to take the photo until I was walking Anna.

The previous occupant planted these,
over thirty five years ago!

But the ones by the wall are sunlit.

Don't look at the daffodil, look at ME!

And that buddliea? buddhelia? buddleja? buddleia? However the hell you spell it... it wasn't quite ready to keel over dead in that heatwave. So while a lot of it died off, it's still going. Even the bit that broke and fell over. I think I might have to see if I can rig up something to lift that part off the ground slightly, or the weeds will get it.

The phoenix buddleia.

SimpleSeq

Something that I would like to do is to make the program adaptive to the display geometry. At the moment, I build two executables - one is for 1280×1024 (my monitor) and the other is for 1280×720 (standard HD). It would be nice to have the code be able to detect the appropriate form to use, with a command line override in case one wishes to force a specific resolution. As part of the work on this, I threw together a very quick test to see if I could get the thing running in 800×600. The answer is... almost yes.
This is what it looks like at the normal 1280×1024 (scaled to 680px width for the blog).

SimpleSeq in SXGA mode (5:4 aspect).

And this is what 800×600 looks like (also scaled to 680px width).

SimpleSeq in SVGA mode (4:3 aspect).

There's a lot that's broken (mostly positional offsets and, indeed, getting things to fit) but once the double-sized text had been disabled and the positioning/sizes bodged to account for that, the final result wasn't actually that bad. As in, "it's stupid but it's not unworkable".
I'm not really planning on making an SVGA version, this was more to test if the user interface drawing was suitably "adaptive" in order to prepare for it being able to deal with the two sizes at the same time.

I also plan to implement note selection. That is to say, right-click on a note (or maybe press Shift-Space or something?) and the highlight box will vanish and instead the note will change colour to mean it is selected. Cursors will move the note around, and Shift-Left/Right will alter its length. It sounds like something that ought to be easy enough to do, but there's a bit of groundwork to do first.

Dolce Gusto Piccolo XS temperature hack

The theory was sound, but unfortunately the coffee maker felt that hot was something in the order of 65°C. That's the sort of temperature that hot water should come out of the tap, it's ridiculously low for making a hot drink. Utterly useless for making tea (if the water is too cool, the tea will be bitter) and equally useless for making a coffee if you're expected to add milk to it. I mean, think about it. You are going to lose five to ten degrees putting the water into a cold mug or glass. Then ten to fifteen degrees, at least, adding milk. Maybe more if you like it milky. What remains? Something that's not far off the temperature you'd make baby formula.

Luckily the machine's simplicity would work in our favour. After getting the thing open - one weird screw and plenty of annoying clips - the insides were the bare minimum necessary to make a functional coffee maker.

What makes my coffee maker work.

On the lower right is the pump. This takes water from the feed container and pushes it through both of the outflow pipes. One of the pipes goes up towards the head.
The other pipe goes to that silver can on the lower left which is the water heater. Going in the bottom, forcing its way through and coming out the top, this then passes up towards the head.
The temperature selector (hot or cold) works by physically closing off the unwanted pipe, and signalling to the microcontroller that the user has made a choice. It does not directly control the pump. If you flip the switch to hot before the heater is up to temperature (red LED blinking), nothing will happen.

There is some sort of switch, given the magnet in the capsule holder I'm going to guess a reed switch, that signals to the microcontroller that a cartridge has been inserted. This will wake the machine up and warm up the heater. The temperature is fixed.

The temperature is controlled by an NTC thermistor. The NTC part is important, it means negative temperature coefficient. I didn't need to look this up, the socket on the little motherboard said "NTC" so I knew that's what it was. This, also, was important because it meant that we could hack the thing.

Now, sometimes a glorious hack means pulling out the firmware, patching it, and stuffing it back again. But sometimes going to all that trouble is overkill and gets to the point of doing it "because you can". A much more pragmatic approach is to understand what the NTC thermistor is actually doing. It's a temperature sensitive resistor with a reasonably predictable temperature curve. And since it is negative coefficient, this means that the resistance will go down as the temperature goes up.
The microcontroller can feed in something, say 3.3V, into one side of the thermistor, and hook the other side into an analogue level input to see how much of that voltage is coming back. As the temperature rises, the resistance goes down, and so the sampled voltage goes up. This is how the microcontroller can judge the water temperature and know how to turn the heater on and off to keep the water usefully hot without it turning into an exploding steam cylinder.

Why I have gone into detail about how the thermistor actually works is in order to make it clear how my pragmatic hack works. I simply cut one of the wires to the thermistor and added an extra resistor in line - you might have noticed this in the above photo.
What this does is add some extra resistance which skews the readings that the microcontroller makes, thus allowing the water to get hotter. The microcontroller still thinks it is keeping the water in the upper sixties, but with the extra resistor, it is actually keeping it in the upper seventies to lower eighties. It isn't especially accurate, I've measured everything from ~77°C to 82°C.
Which, I'm sure you'll agree, is quite an improvement over mid-sixties. Still not enough to brew a decent tea, but more than sufficient for knocking out a quick hot chocolate, or even a hot milk if I use powdered milk.

And, yes, it's because I'm lazy and impatient. Even with an epic THREE KILOWATT KETTLE!!!1!ONE! (cough, more like 2.7kW at 220V! ☺) it takes time. With this coffee maker I can plug it in and let it preheat while I'm putting whatever powder into a paper cup. Then flip the switch and let it chunder and rumble to dribble out the water, then flip the switch when done. It'll take about 20 seconds to fill a small disposable goblet, or about 36 to fill a large one. It doses out at approximately 50cl every eight seconds, irrespective of whether it's hot or cold.

Now, you're possibly asking: Rick, did you seriously just buy a coffee maker in order to make yourself hot non-coffee slightly faster than using a kettle?
Yes... and no. The retail price of the Dolce Gusto Piccolo XS is €40. I got it for half price, so technically I payed €20 for it. Payed? Payed? Wake up Rick, you twat. The word is paid. Sheesh...
Anyway, I payedpaid twenty but I also got an additional amount back on my loyalty card, so when you take that into account, the thing cost me something like €12. That's what I effectively payedpaid.

So now I'm sitting here writing this while enjoying a hot (powdered) milk, having earlier had a hot chocolate. It's exactly the same process as I'd do with the kettle, but it's all done in about a minute.

Actually, it's not because I'm lazy and impatient. I think it's maybe an ADHD thing. If I have to go into the kitchen, put water into the kettle, sort out what I'm going to drink, wait for the water to boil, and then make the drink... far too often if it isn't tea (tea is special) then I'm like "oh, stuff that". So I'll choose to go thirsty instead of just going and doing it. I've only had this machine a couple of days and I'm already a bedwetter. Nah, I lie. ☺ But I'm certainly drinking a lot more after my 6pm no-more-tea cutoff now that it's so much less bother to go make something.

If you're interested, I made a short YouTube video.

Your comments:

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Rob, 4th March 2025, 03:55

Next hack, make it a variable resistor so you can adjust the temperature depending on what temperature you need....

A tree-dwelling mammal, 5th March 2025, 00:04

The perfect temperature for coffee is 88 degrees C. That's true for instant or ground. Adding milk brings it down (milk in last for instant coffee, first for filter coffee, same as the argument with tea!). Leave to stand for a few minutes so you don't take the lining off the inside of your mouth and all will be well with the world.    When someone asks me how I like my coffee, I quite often reply "same as I like my women"...    a. Hot and sweet  b. Black and strong  c. Ground up and in the freezer    *ahem*    I have a 3kW kettle, a Russell Hobbs glass one with a flat plate element. It lets you boil just enough water for one cup of tea or coffee, and takes under 30 seconds to do this. Probably around half a pint of water raised from ambient temperature to boiling in less than half a minute. Not bad.    I must object to your method of making hot chocolate though. Here's how I do it...    Fill a large mug 3/4 full with milk. Whole milk. None of this semi-skimmed stuff.    Place in the microwave and heat on high power for 2 minutes. The milk should just start to boil.    Add a large heaped teaspoon of Cadbury's chocolate powder, optionally a spoon or two of brown sugar if my sugar levels are crashing. Stir thoroughly and top off with cold milk.    That's the quick way. If I'm feeling indulgent I'll heat the milk using the steam heater on the espresso machine, leave half an inch at the top of the mug that gets filled with squirty cream, and top off with chocolate sprinkles and optionally marshmallows.    I'm now craving this. I'm going to hit Submit now and make a hot chocolate before I go to bed. (It'll be a microwave one at this time of night of course, and I won't bother with the marshmallows this time.)

Rick, 5th March 2025, 17:57

According to "the internet", 88C is on the cold side.    "The National Coffee Association and countless coffee professionals recommend a brewing coffee temperature range of 195°F (90°C) to 205°F (96°C) ."    And so on, but they're usually low to mid 90s.    Your 3kW kettle might be closer to 3kW than mine. I did a short video (it's on my YouTube) about why my 3kW kettle isn't (and cannot *ever* be) 3kW.    Milk in the microwave for two minutes... well, that's already twice as long as my *entire* process.  Plus, I'm not partial to all the fatty residue in full cream milk.    Cadburys? This is France. Cadbury has made next to no impact whatsoever here. For a long time it was not permitted by virtue of not passing as chocolate (which must be a real kick in the balls given that Kinder Eggs exist!). When they were bought by... Modelez? somebody like that, they tried to introduce some Cadbury here, quite possibly a different formulation. It was... like something you'd get in a place like Aldi. So I don't see it around any more. That being said, what I remember from my childhood and what I tried a couple of years ago were about as different as different could be. So either being exposed to French chocolate has massively upgraded by appreciation of what chocolate should be (unlikely given my go-to is a Mars bar), or the modern offering is just disgusting (most likely, given what they did to the Kipling Bramley Apple pies).    I don't do marshmallows mostly because the ones you get over here are massive. I used to get Little Becky marshmallows (made in New Jersey), but... well... luckily they're out of stock so I don't need to wrestle with "should I buy something American?". There's Rocky Mountain (IL, Illinois?) which is four times the price for the same thing so, nah, I'll do without.    Plus, you know the origin of gelatine, right? No, not hooves (not enough collagen). But it is taken from the bones and skins of animals, in particular pigs and cows.   You could make your own - it's basically a meringue that doesn't get baked at the end.

A tree-dwelling mammal, 6th March 2025, 17:25

It certainly needs to be off the boil. My usual method is to boil the kettle (with the water filled to the '1 cup' mark) then let it stand for a minute before pouring into the cup, having already added a spoonful of coffee granules and two spoonfuls of Demerara sugar.    This method is for instant coffee of course. If I want my brains blown out I'll use the espresso machine.

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