Hacker News Reader

Comment by fodkodrasz | Hacker News Reader

The site would definitely need a rework based on the input from someone totally unfamiliar with the project.

I cannot know from the opening page, what coffee machines the mod is for, but I can see that an STM32 or an arduino nano and some other parts would be needed.

Not really informative, no pictures on the opening page to show something like before/after, to showcase the benefits, etc.

Yet there is a rickroll...

This is not really sympathetic, but yeah, I can see the begging icon (support paying for a professional technical writer)... but this is also really backwards in my opinion. First you should sell the project to me, then ask for donation.

While the engineering contents might be great, the presentation is very low quality, to put it politely.

View on HN

I've built one of these based on the instructions and use it daily (and love it!), but the tone of the site is pretty reflective of the project overall. It's definitely a really impressive hack and I appreciate all the hard work that's gone into it, but could really use a little more user-facing empathy.

I'm not sure if I'd recommend it to someone else - and if I was doing it again I'd probably spend a few hundred more (than the gaggia + parts cost) and just buy an off-the-shelf machine with the same feature set.

I'm curious about what off-the-shelf machines you would compare a fully modified gagguino. Granted, I don't have one so I'm only going off the feature set listed on the page, but short of a Decent ($$$$) I can't think of any competitors with features like flow profiles.

Well, there's no cheap competitors with (automatic) flow profiles, but there are competitors with automatic flow profiles. ACS Vesuvius, Rocket R nine one (although IIRC this one is actually pressure profiling, not flow profiling), Synesso es.1, Sanremo You to mention some.

If you're looking at manual flow control, basically any E61 group machine can be outfitted with a needle valve for flow control, and a bunch of machines come with one installed from the factory, like the Lelit Bianca. There's also machines like the Slayer 1 group and La Marzocco GS/3 MP.

Gagguino is very cool, and if you're just pulling espressos and not too many back to back, it should be plenty of machine. If you're doing more than a couple of milk drinks, or pull lots of shots back to back, or want to connect it to plumbing, it's not as great of a machine. The fact that you started out with a small single boiler with a vibration pump starts to show.

The Met will hopefully be shipping early next year which will have these capabilities.

They recently updated it with an official vendor for a [PCB kit](https://www.peakcoffee.cc/product/gaggiuino-v3-kit-set-gaggi...) that (I believe) includes all of the internal components needed. I did the lego build w/ tons of soldering and ordering parts off Aliexpress. This new kit should make it much easier for newcomers. You still need to know what you're doing and it's not for everyone. A machine with similar capabilities is something like the Decent at $4k.

I feel the same, as someone who has a Gaggia Classic collecting dust and has long considered splurging on a near-$1000 option because I want all these features...

This is so vaguely written as to seem far more daunting than it probably should, it's unclear how much money or time it would cost me, I don't even know where to start with it. Cool idea, but totally unapproachable to someone without extensive related background.

If you're in the Bay Area I'd love to take the Gaggia off your hands :)

It’s only for a Gaggia. It’s one of those projects that you only stumble into if you already have a Gaggia.

As someone that's been looking into it, it's not just for the Gaggia. It's also for some Silvia models and they have a small list of others that people have gotten it to work for. The list is, unfortunately, on discord and the discord server has some really petty rules and a lot of superiority complexes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com