The Unfinished Symphony

The Problem

We needed a way to track the temperature of the coffee machine without connecting it to the internet, because security.

Constraints

• Must run on a Raspberry Pi Zero
• No external dependencies
• Budget under $50

Failure Parity

I honestly failed to account for the heat generated by the Pi itself. I spent three weeks debugging sensor noise only to realize the CPU was melting the glue holding the sensor. I should have prototyped the thermal enclosure first.

Outcome

It works, but it looks ugly. We learned that physics is harder than code.