Excellent video to assist in the installation of the PID kit. Heads and tails better than the provided instruction manual. Neat job tidying up the wiring too. Thanks very much.
Just installed mine following your video. I'm usually very cack handed at anything like this but your excellent guidance helped me get it installed. Thank you. 😊😊
really great video thanks for your time and effort. I do quite some control work as an hvac tech & thought those smaller gauge wires would be 24vac never seen small wire like that pull 120vac I personally would never trust it from quite some experience of burnt wiring/controls
Excellent presentation. I installed a simpler version (no steam control) of the Auber PID on my Silvia about 8 years ago. It worked fine until last week when the PID display didn't light up. The boiler still heats, and the water pump functions. When installing the PID I placed the relay behind the front face plate of the Silvia. Now, upon removing that plate I noticed that the when the machine is on the LED lamp on the relay is not lit. In your opinion, does this indicate a problem with the relay? Thanks for your attention.
Thanks for the video, I have one question: how do you put it on steam now? Does the Auber PID have an option to (instantly) jump up to higher temp? (like 135c?). Or do you have to keep in the steam thermostat and use that? I'm interested in doing this mod. Cheers
I'm not him but I did PID my Rancilio and can answer your question. Yes, you basically don't need to remove the steam termostat and you can simply use it. You only need to control your brew temperature, so after you brew your coffee, you just flick the steam switch and the other thermostat takes control of boiler temperature. PID will stop switching on the heater because you over shoot with temperature anyway (while in steam mode). I hope this helped you and others. Cheers.
Just purchased the Auber kit for brew temp only. The instructions show the solid state relay (SSR) should be mounted on the wall behind the splash guard panel (behind the steam wand). It looks like your SSR is mounted towards the back of the machine on the bottom. My instructions don't even call for the back panel to remove as you did. I wonder if this is the difference between the two different Auber PIDs??
Hi, it doesn't really mater where you will mount the SSR, if the wires are long enough you can mount it where I have mounted it, and you don't need to drill holes it to your machine.
Hi! First off, thank you for posting this video. It gave me the confidence to build this myself. So, I bought the kit, and installed it... Great! it works. Unfortunately about 20 minutes later after assembling the machine, the heat generation completely stopped. Before I was getting up to 280 F (I have no idea why the Auber controller let it go that high) , but now the machine won't heat at all. I am a little bit fearful that I broke the machine, but I've got absolutely no idea what went wrong. Could please you tell me which wires go to the heating element? Do you have any idea what could have gone wrong? Like I said before, the machine was running (and i have a video to prove this). Thank you very much Mark
Probably you overheated the boiler, and the high limit thermostat open the circuit, check my video how to reset it ua-cam.com/video/AcLUg7lyorc/v-deo.html
Rancilio makes a great machine, my only gripes about it are the drip tray is shallow and it sucks, needs a drain or to be bigger, the water compartment needs to be bigger, and the steam wand take forever and a day to open! To be fair, the steam wand has commercial power and it pulls a great shot, I don't like the strange positioning of the portafilter, more a fan on the gaggia classic honestly.
Is the PID box really held in place by two-sided tape? How long will that adhesion last with heat, moisture and gravity? From my experiences with different brands of two-sided tape, I see problems not long down the road.
Hi, I have repaired machines with PID installed the same way, and it was holding well for couple of years. If the tape is good and you clean well the surface it should not be a problem for few years and then, how hard is to replace the tapes.
At 13:20 you mention the plastic/silicon tubing to protect the wires from getting cut by the sharp edges of the machine. Do you know if that comes with the PID kit, or do I need to go to order separately? If so, any thoughts on the size tube? Any Amazon link that you could share? Thanks in advance. BTW, great video.
Auber mentions on their webpage that the kit can also be used for the Santos 75 espresso machine, so I assume it cannot be used for other machines except the Santos 75 and the Silvia V1-V6.
I'm blind about these sorts of things as I'm no technician. Is the PID automatically manage the temperature or just for showing the temperature inside the boiler?
I've heard mixed reviews of the pre-infusion function, that since it just burst fires the pump at full pressure it damages the puck. What has your experience been? Is it worthwhile?
Hi, there is always air on top of the the boiler which acts as a buffer to gradually increase the pressure. The pump should compress that first before some hot water gets to the coffee puck.
@@dkaraboy thanks for the reply. Do you find the pre-infusion setting reduces channeling or otherwise helps with extraction? I'm seeing a lot of reviews suggesting it's not that helpful but most seem to be from people who haven't used it.
Hi Vlad, I am not sure for which hole you are asking, if you mean the holes for the screws you don't need to cover them, some older boilers has a larger hole going down in the the boiler wall, you don't need to cover it, the water will not come from there. Between the new sensor and the boiler surface you need to apply some thermal paste for faster heat transfer.
@@dkaraboy i ce watchec another video of tuning Silvia. I thought that the thermostat it s inside the boiler, from this confusion i put that question 🙈.
Thanks a lot. I did manage to do the installation but taking off the wires once connected is close to impossible I mistakenly connected brew red wire to steam wire and it refuses to come off so I interchanged the red brew wire with black steam wire even that was difficult and I ended up break insulation so I just taped that part. Machine is working fine . Shouldn't give me any problems no?
Hi, if you used electrical insulation tape it is not the best choice in hot environment like the inside the espresso machine close to the boiler. With the time and the heat the tape glue will unstick and the tape will get loose, better use a piece of heat shrink tubing over the exposed connectors and heat shrink it using a lighter.
@@abcpl14029 Oh man, that is not proper connection, there is big current going trough that connector, I thought you broke the insulation over the connector in my previous advice. If you broke the connector off the wire you need a new connector, strip the end of the wire, cover it with soldering for better contact and properly crimp it inside the new connector, then put heat shrink tubing over the connector ( if it is a naked one) and part of the wire and heat shrink it. If you just wrapped the wire around the SSR male connector, it will start heating because of the poor contact and it may damage the SSR.
Hi, your machine has the new type heating element, the rest should be the same. In the installation you don't connect anything from the PID kit to the heating element ( it has smaller connectors than the old type) so everything should be the same. You can open the top cover, the 4 screws and compare the rest of the connectors to the old ones in my video, they should be the same.
@@dkaraboy okay. I have ordered my kit from the auber website to India. Should I wait for the kit to arrive and then open and see or should I open it and see the connections now itself. The installation seems simple on the manual as well as the video but many a times things aren't as simple as they look. And is the PID worth the price ? Will I get better tasting shots than I do now?
@@abcpl14029 You can open it now and check it, it takes few minutes only. With the PID you get better control of the temperature, also preinfusion, the taste is subjective thing I cant say is it better with the PID.
@@abcpl14029 Yes, definitely the PID control is helping, but there are few more things you should perfect in the process, like good freshly roasted coffee - not older than two weeks, good espresso grinder with exact and uniform grinding like Rancilio Rocky - minimum, grind your coffee right before making the shot, exact amount of ground coffee, tamping, well preheated machine and portafilter all this will help to perfect your espresso shot.
all good but used a thermocouple outside the boiler im not sure that a good idea. pid will get temerature signal about outside surface of boiler not a water inside. because side walls of boiler is too thik we have some inertia in the measurements
Yes, you are right about the thickness of the boiler wall, there will be slight delay it the reaction of the sensor (it is a thermoresistor not couple) but this is very small delay. This is how this PID is designed to be installed.
You need to unplug the red and black cables and connect the brown and black thin cables then connect the original cables to the male piggy-back connectors on the thin cables.
Hi J M, could you please tell us which machine is in the Silvia's + PID price range, with same quality and durability so some folks can save money and time? Thank you!
Excellent video to assist in the installation of the PID kit. Heads and tails better than the provided instruction manual. Neat job tidying up the wiring too. Thanks very much.
Just installed mine following your video. I'm usually very cack handed at anything like this but your excellent guidance helped me get it installed. Thank you. 😊😊
You have the best video I have found so far for general wiring maintenance on my Silva. Great video!
Superb tutorial! I may have to do this on my anniversary black Miss Silvia.... Only missing the money shot of pulling a shot with the new PID. Thanks!
Bravo!!! Incredible video! Thorough and highly educational and well made!! Thank you dkaraboy!!
Nice work very tidy and thorough. Thank you for taking your time to do this.
Thanks so much, very helpful!😊
Thanks for this great video, it's very helpful in combination with the installation instructions from Auber.
Thank you , this was edifying.
Thanks a lot! It worked flawlessly on my M6!
You're welcome!
Thanks dkaraboy, this vid helped me a lot on my Silvia V6.
really great video thanks for your time and effort. I do quite some control work as an hvac tech & thought those smaller gauge wires would be 24vac never seen small wire like that pull 120vac I personally would never trust it from quite some experience of burnt wiring/controls
Are you saying we/he should use thicker wire on the black and brown? Can you recommend the wire we should be using?
If I could like this video 1000 times... I would :)
Excellent presentation. I installed a simpler version (no steam control) of the Auber PID on my Silvia about 8 years ago. It worked fine until last week when the PID display didn't light up. The boiler still heats, and the water pump functions. When installing the PID I placed the relay behind the front face plate of the Silvia. Now, upon removing that plate I noticed that the when the machine is on the LED lamp on the relay is not lit. In your opinion, does this indicate a problem with the relay? Thanks for your attention.
Thanks you sir, followed your instructions, worked great. Many thanks.
Excellent video. Which model is this Silvia?
Thanks a lot for this install - saved me a ton of time !
Thanks so much! This helped me a lot. Now the PID works on my V6 2020 like a charm.
Is it the same process for the V6 ?
Thank you very much this one is a gem!
clean work!
Hello. good job. Can you tell us how you installed the pressure gauge on the machine, please?
There is no pressure gauge on this machine.
Is there a link to buy the kit?
Thank you. This video instruction is excellent !!
Thank you
Excellent video. Thanks very much
Thanks for the video, I have one question: how do you put it on steam now? Does the Auber PID have an option to (instantly) jump up to higher temp? (like 135c?). Or do you have to keep in the steam thermostat and use that? I'm interested in doing this mod. Cheers
I'm not him but I did PID my Rancilio and can answer your question. Yes, you basically don't need to remove the steam termostat and you can simply use it. You only need to control your brew temperature, so after you brew your coffee, you just flick the steam switch and the other thermostat takes control of boiler temperature. PID will stop switching on the heater because you over shoot with temperature anyway (while in steam mode). I hope this helped you and others. Cheers.
Where can I get the kit?
Just purchased the Auber kit for brew temp only. The instructions show the solid state relay (SSR) should be mounted on the wall behind the splash guard panel (behind the steam wand). It looks like your SSR is mounted towards the back of the machine on the bottom. My instructions don't even call for the back panel to remove as you did. I wonder if this is the difference between the two different Auber PIDs??
Hi, it doesn't really mater where you will mount the SSR, if the wires are long enough you can mount it where I have mounted it, and you don't need to drill holes it to your machine.
Hi!
First off, thank you for posting this video. It gave me the confidence to build this myself. So, I bought the kit, and installed it... Great! it works. Unfortunately about 20 minutes later after assembling the machine, the heat generation completely stopped. Before I was getting up to 280 F (I have no idea why the Auber controller let it go that high) , but now the machine won't heat at all. I am a little bit fearful that I broke the machine, but I've got absolutely no idea what went wrong. Could please you tell me which wires go to the heating element? Do you have any idea what could have gone wrong? Like I said before, the machine was running (and i have a video to prove this). Thank you very much
Mark
Probably you overheated the boiler, and the high limit thermostat open the circuit, check my video how to reset it ua-cam.com/video/AcLUg7lyorc/v-deo.html
Yes, you might be able to disassemble the siliva without this video...
But you would not be able to put it back together ;)
Rancilio makes a great machine, my only gripes about it are the drip tray is shallow and it sucks, needs a drain or to be bigger, the water compartment needs to be bigger, and the steam wand take forever and a day to open!
To be fair, the steam wand has commercial power and it pulls a great shot, I don't like the strange positioning of the portafilter, more a fan on the gaggia classic honestly.
Nice video, where did you buy the parts for the pid?
In Canada from here idrinkcoffee.com/products/auber-instruments-pid-kit-for-rancilio?variant=28002046593
Is the PID box really held in place by two-sided tape? How long will that adhesion last with heat, moisture and gravity? From my experiences with different brands of two-sided tape, I see problems not long down the road.
Hi, I have repaired machines with PID installed the same way, and it was holding well for couple of years. If the tape is good and you clean well the surface it should not be a problem for few years and then, how hard is to replace the tapes.
nothing else than 3M VHB tape....i think it can stick a truck to the ceiling !
At 13:20 you mention the plastic/silicon tubing to protect the wires from getting cut by the sharp edges of the machine. Do you know if that comes with the PID kit, or do I need to go to order separately? If so, any thoughts on the size tube? Any Amazon link that you could share? Thanks in advance. BTW, great video.
Hi Robert, the tubing is not included, you can use any electrical insulation tubing to protect the thin wires, even electrical insulation tape.
Where to get cheap pid price
Hi, its posible install this auber Pid in other machine Singler boiler with similar caracteristics?? Thankss
Auber mentions on their webpage that the kit can also be used for the Santos 75 espresso machine, so I assume it cannot be used for other machines except the Santos 75 and the Silvia V1-V6.
We're does the ground get Connected to?, Great Video very Helpful!.
Ground is connected to the ground of the machine on one of the boiler screws, see the video at 9:52.
@@dkaraboy Where does the other end of the green wire connect to?
@@stevengklein If you are asking abou the ground wire it goes to the back of the PID box see it at 13:48
I'm blind about these sorts of things as I'm no technician. Is the PID automatically manage the temperature or just for showing the temperature inside the boiler?
The PID controls the coffee and steam temperature very precisely by reacting much faster than the thermostats.
Thanks! It’s gonna be easier finding the right brewing temperature by having that features. Guess I’ll purchase it soon:)
I've heard mixed reviews of the pre-infusion function, that since it just burst fires the pump at full pressure it damages the puck. What has your experience been? Is it worthwhile?
Hi, there is always air on top of the the boiler which acts as a buffer to gradually increase the pressure. The pump should compress that first before some hot water gets to the coffee puck.
@@dkaraboy thanks for the reply. Do you find the pre-infusion setting reduces channeling or otherwise helps with extraction? I'm seeing a lot of reviews suggesting it's not that helpful but most seem to be from people who haven't used it.
Hello, just a very quick question, where is the ground wire going to？
Please see the video at 9:50
@@dkaraboy I did follow that part, I was wondering where does the other end go, I found the solution but thank you very much for your fast respond.
Amazing! I want to install my PID on my coffe machine
any link or source for getting the PID kit??
In Canada idrinkcoffee.com/products/auber-instruments-pid-kit-for-rancilio?variant=28002046593
how do you "cover" the old thermostat hole? what material?
Hi Vlad, I am not sure for which hole you are asking, if you mean the holes for the screws you don't need to cover them, some older boilers has a larger hole going down in the the boiler wall, you don't need to cover it, the water will not come from there. Between the new sensor and the boiler surface you need to apply some thermal paste for faster heat transfer.
@@dkaraboy i ce watchec another video of tuning Silvia. I thought that the thermostat it s inside the boiler, from this confusion i put that question 🙈.
Thanks a lot. I did manage to do the installation but taking off the wires once connected is close to impossible I mistakenly connected brew red wire to steam wire and it refuses to come off so I interchanged the red brew wire with black steam wire even that was difficult and I ended up break insulation so I just taped that part. Machine is working fine . Shouldn't give me any problems no?
Hi, if you used electrical insulation tape it is not the best choice in hot environment like the inside the espresso machine close to the boiler. With the time and the heat the tape glue will unstick and the tape will get loose, better use a piece of heat shrink tubing over the exposed connectors and heat shrink it using a lighter.
@@dkaraboy thanks for the advice. I'll order that but the part I broke is connected to the solid state relay!
And I broke one of the connectors while trying to pull it off and I just connected the wire to the ssr and taped it
Any email where I can share photos?
@@abcpl14029 Oh man, that is not proper connection, there is big current going trough that connector, I thought you broke the insulation over the connector in my previous advice. If you broke the connector off the wire you need a new connector, strip the end of the wire, cover it with soldering for better contact and properly crimp it inside the new connector, then put heat shrink tubing over the connector ( if it is a naked one) and part of the wire and heat shrink it. If you just wrapped the wire around the SSR male connector, it will start heating because of the poor contact and it may damage the SSR.
Hi, I have a V5 silvia and wanted to know if there would be any change in the process of installation or will it be the same?
Hi, your machine has the new type heating element, the rest should be the same. In the installation you don't connect anything from the PID kit to the heating element ( it has smaller connectors than the old type) so everything should be the same. You can open the top cover, the 4 screws and compare the rest of the connectors to the old ones in my video, they should be the same.
@@dkaraboy okay. I have ordered my kit from the auber website to India. Should I wait for the kit to arrive and then open and see or should I open it and see the connections now itself. The installation seems simple on the manual as well as the video but many a times things aren't as simple as they look. And is the PID worth the price ? Will I get better tasting shots than I do now?
@@abcpl14029 You can open it now and check it, it takes few minutes only. With the PID you get better control of the temperature, also preinfusion, the taste is subjective thing I cant say is it better with the PID.
@@dkaraboy but isn't better control and pre infusion desired for better tasting and consistent shots if I'm right?
@@abcpl14029 Yes, definitely the PID control is helping, but there are few more things you should perfect in the process, like good freshly roasted coffee - not older than two weeks, good espresso grinder with exact and uniform grinding like Rancilio Rocky - minimum, grind your coffee right before making the shot, exact amount of ground coffee, tamping, well preheated machine and portafilter all this will help to perfect your espresso shot.
What version of R Silvia is your machine?
It is V3
Can I use this for my Oscar II (OPV with Sirai Pressurestate mod)?
Not sure, I am not familiar with your machine.
A quite complicated job. Definately not for me to do this.
Always afraid if somethng goes wrong.
Where can I purchase this PID mod?
In Canada from here idrinkcoffee.com/products/auber-instruments-pid-kit-for-rancilio
I have an older Rancilio Miss Silvia (2005) , will this technique apply to the older machine?
Yes it is compatible.
all good but used a thermocouple outside the boiler im not sure that a good idea. pid will get temerature signal about outside surface of boiler not a water inside. because side walls of boiler is too thik we have some inertia in the measurements
Yes, you are right about the thickness of the boiler wall, there will be slight delay it the reaction of the sensor (it is a thermoresistor not couple) but this is very small delay. This is how this PID is designed to be installed.
Couldn't figure out how to get thosee fucking power cables at 11:30 connected, thanx!
You need to unplug the red and black cables and connect the brown and black thin cables then connect the original cables to the male piggy-back connectors on the thin cables.
Hi there! very informative video. i have a question though, can i buy the same auber PID kit for a 220V (european) Rancilio Silvia?
Hi Jordan, I am in North America and I know only the 120v sellers here.
Hi Jordan, I just looked up the PID controller, the one he uses in the video works for both 110v and 220/240v.
@@PointlessMiracle thanks so much for helping out! i appreciate it.
And price raise US$1000
Or just buy a machine with a PID and it saves you time and money. Never understood why folks make it hard.
Hi J M, could you please tell us which machine is in the Silvia's + PID price range, with same quality and durability so some folks can save money and time? Thank you!
@@dkaraboy very good answer... what would be your answer to your question?
Very curious:) maybe lelit pl91t or bezerra unica PID?
Such a clear and calm video. Thanks for the info :)