Woke up at 2:30AM thinking how can it get power without the power switch engaged? So I took a close look at the wiring, and Gaggia had switched the connectors at the power plug! I was following the directions(with pictures) and I tapped into the hot lead. Works great now!

A word about Suyi Liu at Auber Instruments. He(or she?) responded to email for help written at 10:00PM with the exact fix that I found by the next morning. Really impressive!!!!!
Now, back to coffee!!!!

OK, have the mod in and working! I ordered some beans from Ecco, a company I have never dealt with before. Put the beans in ground etc. and the taste was OK, pretty good, but I was disappointed a little. So I searched some sites to see about water temp, how many grams etc. Put the temp up to 224 from the standard 216 and wow what a difference! Now this is a combination of letting the beans rest for another day etc, but still really a lot different(and better!). This of course will lead to even more searching for the right temp etc. The chart provided by Auber plotting the PID temp and water temp at the grouphead is taped to a door of my cupboard. So far I am very pleased with the project. I can't mention preinfusion to my wife just yet

scottfa wrote:OK, have the mod in and working! I ordered some beans from Ecco, a company I have never dealt with before. Put the beans in ground etc. and the taste was OK, pretty good, but I was disappointed a little. So I searched some sites to see about water temp, how many grams etc. Put the temp up to 224 from the standard 216 and wow what a difference! Now this is a combination of letting the beans rest for another day etc, but still really a lot different(and better!). This of course will lead to even more searching for the right temp etc. The chart provided by Auber plotting the PID temp and water temp at the grouphead is taped to a door of my cupboard. So far I am very pleased with the project. I can't mention preinfusion to my wife just yet

When you get a couple of weeks on this setup I would love to hear the result.

-Cecil

Hey wondering how you're doing with the PID, now that you've had a few months to play around with it?

I'll chip in with my PID experience on a Classic...

I've had it for a year now and so far I'm extremely happy. Not because my shots are better than the best before, but by far more constant and no more worries about surfing, which were kind of driving me insane making two servings for myself and my wife in the mornings. Frothing however is a different story. It's hugely improved (by account of the Silvia steam wand mod as well) by giving me the visual cue of when I can start, instead of timing it (didn't always work as expected, don't know why) or doing it by feel.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the upgrade and am content with the machine. Now I'm more focused on upgrading my grinder.

Well it has been a while! PID works great. I thought that I would be switching temps for each different coffee, but I have it set at around 224F and leave it at that. It really is better now. I did use another forumites suggestion and use the PID to monitor when I steam the milk. Actually, it is hard to think back on coffee before the PID. I would do it again.

I also added a PID to my Gaggia and thought it was well worth it. Yes, a small boiler does have temp stability concerns, but I never liked the uncertainty of temp surfing. It also makes steaming dead simple with the digital readout.

HB wrote:I assume you mean huge improvement in shot consistency. As Keith points out, a PID can assure consistency of the brew starting temperature, but once the brewing has started, it's no different than if you had "temperature surfed".

I owned a Rancilo Silvia for years and considered PID'ing it, but decided to upgrade instead. The espressos from a friend who PID'd his were no better than my old fashion temperature surfed versions, although admittedly less work (for those who are interested, I wrote up my findings in Rancilio Silvia with PID temperature controller).

Agree PID on machines will not improve shots, unless your surf technique sucks. Also agree can make it easier, but not terribly so, again unless surf technique sucks! My travel espresso machine is a stock Audrey (Silvia's older sister), which I hadn't fired up in close to a year. Last week brought it in to my Roastery Coffeehouse. Took only 3 shots re-learning/fine tuning my Audrey flush-n-go technique to come close to matching shots from PID'd Linea. Granted Audrey has bigger boiler than Gaggia, and old 100c tstat so flash count for flush-n-pull works marvelously since top of deadband way over heated. After a couple group stabilizing flushes, do one more and build PF, waiting for heater light to go out, as soon as heater light goes out flip on steam switch and start flush. End of flash will yield ~206f start of shot, counting down one-one thousand two one-thousand lowers start of shot temp ~1f each count. Forcing heater on before starting the flush-n-go helps keep intra-shot temp up since heating element already hot before starting shot and stays on the whole shot.

Bottom line is if adding PID makes your espresso routine more enjoyable for you, then yes it's worth it. Just not in the sense of necessarily better espresso.

Agree 100% using PID temp read-out to know when to start steaming just before heater would go off on a single boiler dual use machine is very useful.

Where did you order the PID kit from?