The scheme I came up with in about 10 seconds worked like this:
Each machine has a cheap camera built into the lid attached to a fairly cheap (probably $5) microprocessor with a couple megs of flash storage.
Each K-Cup has a QR code printed on the top. The QR code encodes a nonce and some known data, all encrypted using a private key that only Green Mountain has.
Each machine has the public key burned into the ROM. When you put a cup in, it reads the QR Code. Then it decrypts the data using the public key and then checks the nonce against the ones stored in flash. If the nonce has not been seen before brewing can begin. Once the brewing starts, the nonce is stored in the flash memory on the box so you canāt just reuse the same code over and over again.
Added bonus: You can encode extra data in the QR code, like cup size and maybe a manufacture date or something. The only thing you have to do is make sure the nonce is never reused.
Possible problems:
The inside of a coffee machine is likely to be full of steam and possibly coffee dust. Keeping a cheap webcam working might be difficult. A little sponge that wipes off the lens might help, or a rubber cap that flips up to cover the lens when it is not reading the cap.
Searching the storage will get slower and slower as you brew more cups. Sorting the known nonces can help by allowing you to do a dictionary search, especially since the insert operation is not time sensitive (you have as long as it takes to brew a cup of coffee).
Public key crypto is slow on cheap processors, but since the total volume of data we are talking about is tiny this might not be an issue.
We are approaching it from different sides. True, from the side of cracking the scheme and mass-marketing the cups, youāre right, the heavy-duty DIY approach is unusable.
For the ones who keep a soldering iron on standby all the time, it may have lots of uses. And may spawn a secondary modkit market for third-party cup adapters, DealExtreme.com or its ilk to the rescue. Much like market for modchipping game consoles.
Took me a while to understand; but it is doable too, just a bit more mechanically complex.
Keurig has over a dozen antitrust lawsuits against them thanks to the release of the 2.0. People are not kidding around. This all happened because Green Mountain bought Keurig in 2006, and then in September 2012, the patent for the K-cups expired. Until then - GMtn had the market on their design for machine and cup.
Since the suits havenāt hit court yet, thereās really no way to know how theyāll be decided. Very little information about previous deals between Keurig and the companies now blocked have been released.
The employee wouldnāt elaborate on how it worked, except to say that the ink is proprietary and inspired by counterfeiting technology used by the US Mint. Ian Tinkler, Keurigās vice president of brewer engineering, went into a bit more detail, explaining that an infrared light shines on the ink marking and registers the wavelength of the light reflected back.
Iām glad I saw this post. I have an older Keurig machine and had no idea newer ones had made it harder to use non-official K-Cups. Iāll know not to āupgrade.ā
I have seen devices around where you grind a dose into a reusable mesh basket with a handle attached, and then the basket locks in place in a machine that uses a pump to push temperature controlled hot water through at 10 bar pressure. The whole process takes 30 seconds all up, and there is a large boiler so you can āpullā multiple shots in succession. The whole process is very consistent. Just load the coffee and press a button.
I see them most frequently in commercial coffee shops, but you can probably get them for home use too.
Anything special about these coffee makers? Why do people even buy one that uses a ācartridgeā (my assumption) since there are plenty of coffee makers where you just pour in the coffee powder?
Additionally, the keurig grounds are sealed under nitrogenā
theoretically, they donāt oxidize, unlike packaged ground coffee
grounds.
So do they need this DRM then? I mean one could get a sealed packet of similar coffee and add it to a regular coffee maker too, right? Or does it have to be airtight even while the coffee maker is running?
Technically, a nitrogen generator is just a proper kind of a membrane and a compressor. Many can be seen at gas stations and service facilities, for inflation of tires. I would quite like to see them built into more things, from coffee makers to cupboards to fridge compartments. All you need in addition to the membrane is some valves and a ~120+ psi compressor.
A rig that keeps the whole storage and dispenser chain flushed with inert atmosphere is technically pretty doable.
Hereās the deal-- roasted coffee goes stale in the presence of oxygen. Ground coffee, because it has more surface area, absorbs more oxygen than whole bean coffee. If, however, this ground coffee is packaged under nitrogen, thereās no oxygen. Theoretically, the consumer gets a ground coffee that stays fresh until itās been brewed, without the hassle and expense of getting a good burr grinder-- the cheap blade grinders produce an uneven, and sometimes cooked grind, with lots of dust. But thatās theory.
I believe there are other, similar, single serve coffee makers that use this idea. They may be better than the Keurig. They may be worse. Personally, I hand grind beans and use an aeropress. The expense of pod coffee combined with the expectation that itās not very good throws me off.
I also like milk in my coffee. Very few stores that can demonstrate the Keurig have milk available, so I canāt say with any definitiveness that Keurig makes far inferior coffee. I have to trust the coffee snobs, who assure me that itās insipid.
