this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2026
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I cannot think of any way a coffee ~~massive~~ machine could be improved by connecting it to the Internet.
The built in computer is mining bitcoins and the generated heat is used for boiling the water.
Back when it was actually worth it, I used a mining rig as a space heater in my shed, made from some 2nd hand gpus. It paid for the electricity it used so it was good. Gpu mining is pointless today though.
There was at least one company selling this sort of thing as a product back then. It was more efficient than conventional electric heating, if I'm not mistaken, even without the income from mining.
Is your startup still in the VC stage, or are you looking to IPO soon?
i wonder if it could actually make economic sense, instead of burning the electricity directly in some heat spiral.
There's a space heater called the Trio and a few furnace replacement things. And in general, waste server heat can often directly plug into central heating systems, be it mining bitcoins or Google datacenters.
Move into a cold climate, and buy a house that has only electric heaters. Those were popular in the 70s, and nobody wants them now, so you can buy one with pocket change. Build a mining cluster in one bedroom and install air ducts to distribute the warm air throughout the rest of the house.
Since it started getting cold about two weeks ago, I started Folding@Home 24/7, and it keeps my office temperature just right.
yeah, that is nothing new, friend uses heat from small datacenter (i don't think that 20 racks constitutes datacenter, but i am not sure if there is better word 😀) he has in a basement of that building to contribute to its heating.
i really mean if you could make bitcoin coffee-maker and if it could eventually pay for the price difference between normal and bitcoin one and how much coffee would you have to drink to make that work.
It’s doable, but you’ll need at least four heat pumps in series. Each one would bump up the temperature of the water, until you get 165 °C steam. The last few steps aren’t very efficient, but it’s still cheaper than using electrical heaters. Those heat pumps will take a fair bit of space and money. Oh, and those machines make as much noise as a big freezer. Other than that, it should be fine.
You can't be serious right? Right?
You mean you dont need your machine to tell some ad brokers to contact you about needing to buy more coffee soon?
I guess some kind of home automation setup could start coffee brewing when you wake up or just before you get home.
It does seem like a pretty marginal benefit.
That being said, I have a hard time understanding why so many people own other IoT things, say, smart speakers. Like, I just don't see the problem that they're solving.
I remember having a coffee machine that worked on a timer, like 25 years ago, it didn't need the internet
Coffee machines have had programmable auto-start at X time for decades at this point, no app or internet required, just a digital clock and simple, dumb electronics.
We're still talking about marginal, unnecessary things, but with a "smart" coffee pot, you could in theory start the pot when you're a few minutes away from home, if you like some after work. A pot connected to something like home assistant (which I have no idea if it exists) can brew the pot only on your workdays, or you can start it after you leave the bedroom, regardless of time. You could probably do quite a few "neat" things.
I'd love my hifi to have the possibility to be controlled from say my phone, because sometimes it'd be neat. But that's about it. I actually set it up but it's more of a hassle than a benefit so I just dropped it.
If it wasn't for all the snooping and crap, we'd already have a super home control system, but today is not yet the day...
It's not the snooping, it's companies making their own incompatible proprietary system and jealously guarding it to force you to only buy their stuff, except everybody else is doing the same thing so the actual result is that getting things working together and keeping it all working is a pain in the ass.
Hence "and crap"
And every time an open standard is adopted it opens the market and is better for all those businesses that resisted it. Yet they always resist. It's so infuriating.
In my case, throwing alarms on it instead of my phone...
Saves the room for an alarm clock and my ass in case the phone is out of battery.
Also controlling music via voice while cooking/with dirty hands or from the phone...
All of this said, my speaker isn't smart yet, maybe I'll try 1an IR bridge tho. But these use-cases should be achievable with homeassistant
I've seen a few espresso maker models on James Hoffman's channel that allow users/roasters to share brewing profiles online. Not that the feature requires internet, but it does make it easier.
I can only think of negative things that could result frankly. WTF.