Determine height of Coffee in the pot using Python imaging
make pictures of the pot with different levels of coffe in it.
downsample the image to maybe 4*10 pixels.
make the same in a loop for each new live picture.
calculate the difference of each pixels value compared to the reference images.
take the reference image with the least difference sum and you get the state of your coffe machine.

you might experiment if a grayscale version or only red or green might give better results.
if it gives problems with different light settings this aproach is useless. just buy a spotlight for the coffe machine, or lighten up, or darken each picture till the sum of all pixels reaches a reference value.
We have a web-cam in our office kitchenette focused at our coffee maker. The coffee pot is clearly visible. Both the location of the coffee pot and the camera are static. Is it possible to calculate the height of coffee in the pot using image recognition? I've seen image recognition used for quite complex stuff like face-recognition. As compared to those projects, this seems to be a trivial task of measuring the height. 
(That's my best guess and I have no idea of the underlying complexities.)
How would I go about this? Would this be considered a very complex job to partake? FYI, I've never done any kind of imaging-related work.