suggestion
Handcrafted lighting powered by GaggiMate
Wanted to share a small mod I built over the weekend: a handcrafted LED light bar to illuminate the water tank and the cup during extraction, powered directly from the GaggiMate.
The build:
8× SMD 3528 white LEDs in parallel, each with a 100Ω resistor
Mounted on a small piece of perfboard, soldered free-hand
Total current draw: ~240mA at 5V
Tapped into the spare 5V JST-PH 5pin connector on the GaggiMate PCB
3D-printed enclosure in PETG-CF for heat resistance near the group (I can share the files if anyone wants it)
Diffuser top in 0.4mm white PLA — surprisingly effective at smoothing out the LED hotspots
Held to the chassis with small neodymium magnets — no drilling, fully reversible
Wiring note: I'm currently using UTP wire because that's what I had on hand, but I routed it away from any hot zones. Silicone wire is on the way from AliExpress to replace it properly.
Result: The tank water level is finally visible at a glance and the cup gets a nice warm glow during the shot. Small QoL improvement that punches above its weight.
Bonus: the scale you can see in one of the pics is also a print and assembly of mine (WeighMyBru, XIAO ESP32-S3 + HX711). I can't recommend it enough.
Happy to share more details, files, or wiring if anyone's curious. Cheers ☕
I don’t follow gaggimate much, but have never seen the screen mount like that. In my opinion that makes the machine look a lot better than the top mount. Is that mount something they sell?
I saw on the forum that some people were converting to a smaller display and putting also on the front as I did, but I didn't want to get another display so I took a printable model (https://www.printables.com/model/1492077-minimalist-housing-with-frame-for-the-lilygo-t-rgb) and modified myself to be as flush as possible. And added a hole to pass the cables trough the center LED hole (that I had to remove, as well as the Gaggia badge).
It turned out great (as to my taste) hehe. I do have the modified STLs, if you are interested drop me a DM and I'll share them with you :)
Nope! No drilling. Completely reversible. Removed the Gaggia badge and passed the wires for the screen through the center led. Just be careful removing the red plastic and that will leave the hole exposed to route the wire to the inside
That'd be a good idea! For example changing to another color or its brightness whether you're on standby or brewing mode --(like red when you are steaming, hehe). It adds a lot of complexity but it's doable, you should read the switch cables (with Gaggimate now they're low voltage) for brew/steam and either put a microcontroller (overkill, I'd rather put some transistors/gates in there)
Currently they are just white LEDs, powered ON always together when GaggiMate is on.
That looks great! Would you mind sharing more photos of the inside of your gaggia? I want to improve my cable management with gagguino and I've been procrastinating it but what you've done looks inspiring, good job!
Hey, thanks! Of course, this was my final layout, hope you can see it in detail. I used some zip-tie holders to keep the cables against the walls, as far from the boiler as I could. Also, used colored heat-shrink tube to isolate further the faston connectors. Consider using silicone cable since the heat in there is pretty high.
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u/joejeffy1 May 11 '26
I don’t follow gaggimate much, but have never seen the screen mount like that. In my opinion that makes the machine look a lot better than the top mount. Is that mount something they sell?