Adapted by:
Alejandro Alcolea
WriterWriter at Xataka. I studied education and music, but since 2014 I've been writing about my passion: video games and technology. I specialize in product analysis, photography, and video. My body is 70% coffee.
Alba Mora
WriterAn established tech journalist, I entered the world of consumer tech by chance in 2018. In my writing and translating career, I've also covered a diverse range of topics, including entertainment, travel, science, and the economy.
Few things are more frustrating than dealing with a seemingly simple appliance that doesn’t operate exactly as you’d like. One common example is household devices designed to be convenient. They can sometimes be overly complex or packed with functions that fall short of the mark. A software developer recently experienced this firsthand when he purchased a coffee maker, prompting him to make a practical decision.
He chose to hack it. As it turns out, modifying coffee makers isn’t as uncommon as you might think.
Functions vs. user. Gabriel Ciubotaru is a software developer and expert in cybersecurity and reverse engineering. At a recent conference, Ciubotaru explained that he had bought a coffee maker. Although he liked it, the machine had an annoying feature: It automatically turned off after 30 minutes of inactivity.
While this functionality could save energy, it created a contradiction for him. Each time the coffee maker was turned on, it initiated a purge cycle that dispensed a moderate amount of water, resulting in wasted water and time. After searching through the settings, Ciubotaru discovered he could change the default timeout to three hours. Since he typically makes coffee every four hours, this wasn’t suitable for his lifestyle.
As such, he decided to disassemble the machine.
Hacking the coffee machine. It seemed like a simple task. He had to remove the motherboard, locate the microcontroller, and identify the system responsible for automatically shutting down the machine. The goal was to modify the firmware to change the shutdown time and then reassemble the machine.
Ciubotaru discovered that locating the microcontroller was relatively straightforward. However, the challenging part was navigating through the tangled lines of code to find the specific sections that he needed to modify so his coffee machine would turn off at his desired time.
He accomplished this by examining the code that controls the warning icons displayed on the coffee maker’s screen. After modifying those values, he uploaded the updated code to the microcontroller. As a result, the coffee maker functions exactly as he wants.
Ciubotaru provided all the detailed steps in his lecture. He also mentioned that he invested 100 hours of work to hack the coffee maker to save himself 30 seconds a day. According to him, it was totally worth it.
Homemade projects. Not everyone has the resources, desire, time, and interest to achieve the same results as Ciubotaru. While a 30-second improvement may not seem worth the effort to many, some users do want to experiment with their coffee makers.
One popular model is the De’Longhi Dedica, which features default settings optimized for standard coffee extraction times. For the pressurized filter holder that comes with the machine, these settings work well. If you buy a non-pressurized filter holder, the default settings may not be adequate.
Fortunately, there’s a way to program a slower extraction time by using the three buttons on the machine, and this is mentioned in the manual. However, the manual doesn’t guide users on how to achieve better milk froth.
While the included frother is functional, it’s not perfect. One effective technique for gaining more control over the frothing process is to remove the metal part of the frother and keep the rubber piece, which has a much thinner nozzle. This allows for better control, but there’s a downside. Due to the pressure, the nozzle tends to detach. The solution is to secure the nozzle to the coffee maker, which effectively resolves the issue.
Modifying your coffee maker. In filter coffee makers, the most common setup includes a heating element at the base that keeps the coffee hot for an extended period. This means that, after extraction, the coffee continues to be heated at high temperatures, which alters its flavor. This isn’t ideal, but even expensive machines still implement this feature.
A common modification for this type of coffee maker is to open the machine and disconnect the wires that supply power to the heating element. This change doesn’t affect the coffee maker’s operation while brewing, but it does stop the base from continuing to cook the coffee once it’s been extracted. Although this modification may seem daunting, it’s worthwhile because it has a direct influence on the coffee’s taste.
Other modifications include installing a higher-quality milk frother in machines like the Dedica, adjusting the water pump pressure, and changing the water diffuserin a Moccamaster.
More serious implications. Hacking a coffee maker is a serious thing. For instance, Martin Hron, a security researcher at Avast, discovered that a first-generation Smarter Coffee operated as an unprotected Wi-Fi hotspot. The connections were unencrypted, and the device allowed firmware updates without any authentication.
What did this prove? First, Hron was able to make the grinder spin uncontrollably, waste boiling water, and emit beeping sounds. He could also display a ransom message with a URL where the user could make a payment to stop the coffee maker from misbehaving.
More importantly, Hron highlighted the potential risks of insecure IoT devices, which can lead to significant problems. Although the hardware in these devices is often too basic, some tech-savvy individuals can even manipulate them to mine cryptocurrencies.
Image | Sam Riz
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