But, I thought Arduino had become officially evil once it joined Qualcomm. Besides which a Raspberry Pi Pico is cheaper than any Arduino-branded board ever was. So I'd just program this type of thing in MicroPython.
I do see that in the article, the project used an Adafruit Trinket M0, a very cute little board that has CircuitPython already installed. So I wonder why not just use CircuitPython. Anyway though, it's a Cortex M0 board, rather than the traditional Atmega that the Arduino world grew up using.
They have - but for less technical users their IDE is not too bad, and there are way too many bits out there relying on it, including lots of stuff not arduino, plus it's open source. And as it reloads files on changes can be used with a real editor as well. So for the software side I'm inclined to stick with that thing.
For hardware side it's different - but every interesting arduino has shitloads of clones available. In the past I've been buying those only for special use cases where there were no genuine arduinos to support the project - now since they got crazy it's only clones, and whenever I touch any of my old projects I'm updating the list of materials to recommend buying clones. You can still get nano clones for just a bit over 1 EUR each, so for projects where that is enough that's hard to beat value for the money.
I get the diy factor, but still, the smartphone was supposed to be smart...
I like the button idea. 1. I'd love to see it battery powered. 2. I found a vape thing yesterday - I would love to see a battery from a Vape re-used if possible. 3. Lastly - based on a project I'm trying to do now. Can you somehow sleep the microcontroller so it uses no power while in standby and then starts the timer, so you have close to indefinite battery life?
https://randomnerdtutorials.com/latching-power-switch-circui...
That was way too short. It looks like they've finally updated the instructions somewhat, now recommending 60 seconds before starting to plunge. [2]
It works because they also recommend a very fine grind, but that's still pretty short. It looks like Counter Culture recommends using regular pour-over grind and the inverted method and 2-3 minutes, [3] which happens to also be what I do. Though I'm not really particular, so long as it's somewhere between about 1.5 and 3.5 minutes. (Breakfast is a hectic time while also handling kids...)
1. https://www.seattlecoffeegear.com/pages/product-resource/aer...
2. https://aeropress.com/pages/how-to-use
3. https://counterculturecoffee.com/blogs/counter-culture-coffe...
It does make sense, if imagine pressing through in 5 seconds vs 30 seconds, that the paper filtration would work better in the slower press. But I'm not sure if anyone has scientifically measured this.
Actually wait, it's coffee. Someone has definitely scientifically measured it and probably published a two hour YouTube video with their results.
The results will always be good. Maybe not the level you'd get with extremely high quality light roasted beans and a very careful pourover technique, but maybean aeropress isn't the best brewer for those beans in the first place.
I personally found that the time actually doesn't matter that much, you control extraction by grind size, water temperature and agitation. It might be that if you grind too fine you can still reduce extraction by cutting the time short, but that seems rather inconvenient for this method.
I usually let it steep for 5 minutes, but the exact time doesn't change much. Shorter times aren't that desirable for me anyway as the coffee is still too hot then as I start with boiling water.
Fwiw i oftrn let me aeropress brew for a few minutes. 30 secs is hella short.