Why press a French press when the French press can press itself? Here’s Estefannie to explain it all…

Okay, okay. I’m sure you get it by now. Here at Pi Towers, we love a good coffee hack. In truth, we love any coffee hack. And we also love Estefannie … so you can see where today’s blog is going.

Building an automated French press

For the build, Estefannie uses the Particle Internet Button to tell a wooden castle when it’s ready to press her coffee. Wooden castle? We’ll get there – hold on.

Wait, I said hold on … never mind.

The Internet Button houses a Photon, a small programmable WiFi development board for Internet of Things (IoT) prototyping. Alongside RGB LEDs, tactile buttons, and an accelerometer, the Internet Button allows wireless control, via the cloud, to the Raspberry Pi. Perfect for the self-pressing French press.

Like so…

So, wooden castles? Two wooden castles act as housings for servo-powered screws that raise and lower the French press pressing bar. When the coffee is ready to be pressed, they turn in one direction, lowering the bar. When the press is complete, they turn the other way to raise it, giving access to the perfectly brewed coffee. Everything is controlled using Python code on the Raspberry Pi, triggered by the press of the Internet Button.

The button has three states. Green indicates that everything is ready to press. Magenta indicates the four-minute brew time, and a rainbow tells you that your coffee is ready for consumption. Beautiful.

Automate your own

Once you have perfected the basic build, the same rig could be used to automate no end of household chores. How about setting a timer to slowly press tofu? Turning the rig on its side to open and close a door? Or how about raising and lowing the bar much more quickly to plunger the toilet? Too much? Yeah, I thought the same as I typed it.

You can find the code for the build on Estefannie’s Github. I also suggest subscribing to her YouTube channel for more fun tech hacks and Raspberry Pi builds.

Afterthought

If Simone Giertz is the Queen of Shoddy* Robots, is it fair to say that Estefannie is rightly claiming her spot at the Queen of un-Shoddy ones?

*Helen made me make this word ‘universally friendly’. No swears. Helen is such a spoilsport. In retaliation, I have incorporated a Mamrie Hart-style drinking game into today’s blog. Take a shot every time I use the word ‘press’. Take that, Helen. TAKE THAT!