OT - Got a new coffeemaker for the office

Most of us will agree that a good cup of coffee is at least as important as a fast scope and a hot soldering iron when debugging a new micro- processor design. Nonetheless, JK micro has gone without a coffeemaker because nobody wants to smell or drink old burned coffee that's been sitting on the burner too long.

All this has changed. Today I purchased a Phillips Senseo coffee machine. This marvelous device will make a small or large cup of excellent coffee in about 1 minute. It uses one-shot coffee "pads" which are available in dark, medium, light and decaff roast. It's very low maintanance and the coffee is at least as good as a $1.25 cup at the local coffee shop. My personal test for good coffee is whether or not I can enjoy drinking it black. The answer is yes.

Oh, and it's microprocessor-controlled so I guess this is on-topic (:

Reply to
Jim Stewart
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I must have rank beyond my job title, because at my new job I have a cube right next to the coffee machine. I don't recall the brand, but it makes hot chocolate (indifferent quality, instant mix), mocha, coffee (strong, medium or weak), decaf, or hot water for tea. The front is transparent and while the unit is in operation, a light turns on inside so you can watch the coffee being ground and the brewing piston move up and down.

It uses regular unground coffee and a belt of filter paper, so in theory it could be (but isn't) stoked up with good stuff like Jamaican Blue or Starbuck's. I don't much like coffee machines that use proprietary capsules or other single-use, single-source carriers for the sacred bean, because you can't change grades when necessary.

Of course, despite this luxury, I can't get a roll of solder or a DB9 connector without going into a semi-comprehensible AS/400 materials management system and requisitioning it on 5-day delivery from a warehouse in another country (which warehouse buys from Digi-Key, BTW), so it's nice to see mgmt has the right priorities :)

Reply to
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards

Uhoh - Philips and microprocessor in the same sentence... ah well. Never mind.

;)

Steve

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Reply to
Steve at fivetrees

Jim Stewart wrote really OT:

Ack.

Avoiding the "pads" is possible by using a slightliy more expensive (starting at ~500EUR) automatic coffee machine like a Saeco Magic/Royal... or Jura Impressa.

IMO that's part of a minimum workplace equipment .

Oliver

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Oliver Betz, Muenchen (oliverbetz.de)
Reply to
Oliver Betz

In article , Mike V. writes

Yes there are vending machines with GMS phones/modems in them. These not only order stock and report problems but can also process credit card sales on line.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ \/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/\ /\/\/ snipped-for-privacy@phaedsys.org

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Reply to
Chris Hills

I have seen the technology demonstrated on soda machines, and I've also seen it integrated with various other technologies (e.g. linked in with a billing infrastructure so you can pay with methods other than cash, such as billing to a cellphone account or paying with a contactless e-cash tag). I don't think it's widely used, though.

Reply to
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards

I have the black one (wanted the blue one but they were out of stock at Wally-World). Pretty nifty. A little on the noisy side when it is priming its pump.

I think the Folger's brand coffee pads will fit too. I am tempted to try some origami on a coffee filter and fill it with my own fresh ground beans. Probably just an accident waiting to happen...

Reply to
Rob Young

The embedded market is DEFINITELY hotter now than it was a year ago. I got three very interesting responses, two of which led to interviews and offers, and about two dozen that I didn't follow up because they involved relo (If anyone wants to go to Toronto and/or Korea, ATI is hiring... there's also seemingly a lot of embedded work in TX and AZ).

The position I'm in has a significant (40% or more) project management component as well as raw engineering, so there are considerable opportunities for networking and making an impression on people. We'll see. Softly, softly, catchee monkey. I'm kind of enjoying just being part of middle America for a while.

In the meantime, it's exciting to see my name as EPL on project specs at a company that actually matters.

Yeah, I had one when I worked for Rubbermaid (actually, two - one T&E and one unaudited P-card for parts purchases under $1000). But I'm not going to get one at this new company. They have central purchasing for everything (because they buy things 50,000 at a time), and it just happens that all the parts I am likely to want are warehoused at the manufacturing facilities, which are in other countries. CERTAIN parts are warehoused here in NY, but they're mostly finished goods or subassemblies.

It's a model that I've also seen in supermarkets, 2-line LCD, about a dozen buttons on a membrane keypad. It doesn't have any brand information on it at all (but I'm guessing it's probably made by another division of the company!). There is an optional coin/banknote acceptor module, too (not fitted to the ones at my workplace). Unfortunately it's locked, and the ancillary staff at work are apparently invisible daemons - even if I stay late or arrive early, I never see anyone restocking the fridge or coffee machine, or vacuuming, or cleaning the bathrooms... these things just happen by magic. The thing must weigh 100lb, and it's permanently attached to mains water, so not exactly the kind of thing I can heft over the partition to examine in private :)

Reply to
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards

On 10 Jun, in article snipped-for-privacy@ieee.org "Rob Young" wrote: ........

Sounds like a true 'engineer', as in

"If it ain't broke, fix it until it is"

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Paul Carpenter

MPE worked on such a machine just before the dot.bomb and network crashes. They even solved the problem of vending fresh milk in coffee machines ... but then the venture/vulture capital people ran away.

Stephen

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Reply to
Stephen Pelc

I am willing to relocate to any english-speaking country (insert joke about Texas here), so please point any recruiters who call you at my resume at

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- I do a fair amount of consulting in Canada and wouldn't mind a captive position.

Hmmm. Harry Potter technology, or have they figured out how to outsource janitorial functions to India? :)

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Reply to
Guy Macon

Yes there are, I designed such a system (although it was for dispensing payment cards rather than coffee :-(). It connected to a server via an analogue modem and could either be polled for its status or call the server when various thresholds had passed (stock too low, cash level high). It would also call the server to authorise credit card transactions. I suspect the deployment of such enabled systems is down to economics - for "low value" machines it may be easiest just to send out a person on a regular basis - once the usage pattern has been established there would be few hiccups.

Andrew

Reply to
Andrew Jackson

Gevalia all the way, there coffee is awesome and I got a 12-cup with brew timer for signing up. I agree with one of the other posters, I'm not too comfortable with buying propritary coffee pads, and coffee from Philips? I think they should stay out of the food buisness..... OTOH, that coffee maker (Senseo) it'self is pertty sweet, except for the propriatary coffee pad bit.

-Jim

Reply to
Mood

Nah, you USians wouldn't know a decent cup of coffee even if it hit you in the face :-) Of course, Gevalia is muuuuch better than the average muck served in the US but I yet have to find a country were a better cup is served as in the Netherlands.

They aren't proprietary coffeepads, at least not over here. The original Senseo pads are from Douwe Egberts, a major coffee brand, and there are quite a few other brands selling pads. And then there's of course the 'house'-brand in each supermarket.

It does indeed make the best coffee I have ever had.

Meindert

Reply to
Meindert Sprang

The Senseo / Douwe Egberts' coffee pads are distributed in this country by Sarah Lee, known mostly for their mass produced pastry products. There are several other products on the shelf that look compatible but I haven't tried any yet.

Reply to
Rob Young

Op 19 Jun 2004 09:27:35 -0700 schreef Rob Young:

Sarah Lee _owns_ Douwe Egberts. In _this_ country, Douwe Egberts is the distributor. I my city you can smell the factory once or twice a week. Usenet is not restricted to USians ;-)

Coos

Reply to
Coos Haak

Interesting. I didn't know who owned whom.

On the side panel of the packages I bought, it said "distributed by". Nothing about ownership. It is not uncommon for two similar products to be on the store shelf both with different brand names but those brand names are owned by the same parent company. And in the case of international products, there are agreements worked out by expensive lawyers so that the company names on the outside of packages are more familiar to the people in their respective countries. All designed to sell more to us Usenet-readin', coffee-drinkin', consumer-cattle... ;-)

And yes, I know the Usenet is world-wide.

And I also know the smell to which you refer. There is a Folger's coffee factory in Kansas City and I've driven by many times and could smell it. And there is a small coffee house up the street from me that roasts small batches (wonderful smell). Smells much better than the cattle feed-lots and slaughter houses in the town where I grew up. The smell of the Folger's plant makes me happy and I think of coffee. The smell of the slaughter house does NOT make me think of a juicy steak... :-)

Now if we could just slip some microcontroller discussion back into this thread again... ;-) Perhaps international law to require RFID chips in every coffeebean...

Rob

Reply to
Rob Young

"Rob Young" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com...

What the Senseo machine lacks is an automatic start; turn on the machine, put in the pad, press and hold the 1 or 2 cup button for two seconds, so that it remembers to start when it has heated up. Now you have to wait 90 seconds, before you can hit start. This is only a simple software change that needs to be done.

Another thing I'd like to see is that it won't start when the lid isn't locked down, and that you can't start it again without opening and closing the lid (assuming that one only does that to replace the pad). I had a couple of times I forgot to replace the pad, or to put a pad in with the lid unlocked. This requires a switch on the lid, and increases the cost of course.

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Reply to
Frank Bemelman

My thoughts exactly. What would it cost? One bit of ram memory and 5 or 6 bytes of code? I noticed this issue within a couple hours of first plugging it in.

Not such an issue for us, but it would be nice.

Reply to
Jim Stewart

Perhaps you can hack it for us ;)

Sooner or later it will happen to you. Not closing the lid gives a mess, but you can turn it off quickly. Running the pad for the second time, seems to produce coffee, but you soon find out when you add milk or drink it.

BTW, the first version had two fingers in the front that you had to sqeeuze together, the later ones have the much better handle that you push down to lock.

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Thanks, Frank.
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Reply to
Frank Bemelman

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