Picked up a La Peppina as my first espresso machine, weird story: I really liked the look of Frank Zappa's personal espresso machine he took on tour, complete with "flight case" and after plenty of googling tracked it down to being a La Peppina.

Here's a picture of Frank Zappa's La Peppina as it was being offered during the Kickstarter:



Anyway, I managed to find an in-box unit on eBay complete with original bill of sale from ABC Importers near me in Sun Valley, CA.

Side note: Deluxe Coffee & Pasta is in part of the old ABC Importers building and still has new old stock La Peppina parts from their inventory.

Anyway, I got my unit, it's in amazing shape, but loading the basket is a hassle, so I ordered the 43mm funnel from OE, it didn't work optimally and was making a mess, so I threw this together in OpenSCAD and printed it out on my 3D printer:





It sits on the rim of the basket and allows me to tamp through the funnel, gets every grain into the basket where it belongs.

Next order of business was PID control, so I grabbed some parts off the shelf and threw together a PID test fixture with an old crock-pot and a Teensy LC.



I wrote some graphing code using u8glib 2, implemented the new PID library by Brett Beauregard, and even managed to find a 2A SSR sitting around, while some eBay 25A Crydom SSRs were en route. ($6/ea!)



Some fiddling with "window sizes" to correlate with 60Hz AC and massaging the actual PID values I'm comfortable with, bought some outdoor electrical stuff from Home Desperate and threw together a much more kitchen friendly enclosure for the gear, got it all stuffed in there and did a function test last night.



Not bad for a weekend project.



Next step is a 3D printed "basket retainer" so I can knock out pucks without awkwardly holding a spoon against the rim of the portafilter.

Very cool. I just picked one up too but blew my heating element so I am on that mission. I'll be following your updates!