“Recently, my wife’s many-years-old Keurig stopped working. Like any engineer/hacker/maker, my first instinct was to poke around, clean out certain parts, etc. to see if I could fix it, and after some time I did get coffee flowing once again. Along the way, however, I noticed that it was rather nasty inside, and that these machines are not made to be easily be taken apart and serviced. Normally, I’d say this is a bad thing, but when dealing with water plus enough electrical current to raise water to a very high temperature, one can understand why it was made in such a way.
So, it was a time for a new unit, which actually looks quite nice on our counter now. The old one, however—with a water tank and means for dispensing it—seemed like a perfect hacking target to turn into a sort of Pi-based gardening setup!”