If you an Espresso lover, then you must at least have an Espresso maker in your kitchen. Doesn’t it refreshing and tantalizing to have a cup of Espresso in the early morning? And, it would be even better, if you owned a Giaggia Espresso!

Today, you’re going to crate a computer interface for your Gaggia Espresso machine, by simply replacing the factory thermal switches with a PID controller. Beside that, you’ll need to substitute the “steam” and “pump” toggle switches with a LCD/button menu system. Isn’t this a brand new and fun experience to you here?

The Arduino Decimilia microcontroller will be used to utilize the AVR ATmega168. The LCD uses six digital 10 pins, which as:

Four for a 4 bit parallel data bus,

One for Register Select, and

One for Operation enable signal.

The SSRs will take one digital I/O pin each, while the AD595 takes one 10 bit AD converter pin. The three buttons are sharing one external interrupt pin and use two digital I/O pins to indicate which button has been pressed.

Caution: Remember to switch off the current and unplugged the Gaggia Espresso, before you’re starting this project!