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Permalink Reply by Dustin DeMers on December 20, 2011 at 8:25pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alhjleL2oC0

Heres a link to the designers talking about there product. Theres 3 vidoes, so after the first is over just click the 2nd, then 3rd

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Permalink Reply by Mike McGinness on December 20, 2011 at 8:49pm

My first reaction was similar to Brady's. However, parts in volume prices go down. Large volume down substantially.

 

AND I happen to have an old pristine Krupps Gusto that back in it's day sold for under $100 and if you know how to surf it can pull a respectable shot. (made until 2004, picked it up off Craigslist a couple months ago for $10 figured what the heck. Had one once intended for travel use but gave it to a friend. Didn't get it for travel use since have a Rancilio Audrey for that now. Just for the heck of it and to show my baristas what CAN be done with a low end machine and a good grinder.)

 

Anyway, I do believe it is likely feasible to do a PID SBDU thermoblock at the price point they suggest.

 

Almost pulled the trigger on $200 pre-buy but stopped during Amazon checkout. Want to check Amazon's fraud/non-delivery whatever policies first.

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Permalink Reply by Brady on December 21, 2011 at 4:37am

OK... this kinda makes sense. That first shipment may not have to be UL approved, since they are basically field test units. Any parts cost exceeding the $200 investment is a small price to pay for buzz in the enthusiast community.

Withdrawing much skepticism. These people are pretty clever.

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Permalink Reply by Gleb Polyakov on December 21, 2011 at 11:32am

Hey Y'all,

I'm Gleb Polyakov, one of the creators of the Kickstarter project. Jeff Hoeppner let me know that there was a thread about our project on baristaexchange, so I thought I'd stop by and try to answer any questions that you guys might have.

The biggest thing I've noticed discussed is the UL certification. Basically, the machines we're going to be sending out to Kickstarter supporters are a hardware beta test version. The Kickstarter version won't be UL, CL, or NSF certified or listed, and we don't recommend that cafes use them in a commercial setting, because you'll run into a lot of insurance issues that way.

We'll be taking all the feedback we get from people on the first machines into account for our final retail version. (Which, given the time it takes to get these certifications, will be Q4 2012 at the most optimistic projection)

As to the software, it's completely open-source. We use an Arduino-based board, and the entire coding environment, code, and hardware settings will be known (and any unused pins we have broken out). We're really excited to see what kind of things people will do with our machine, and are currently building a forum on our website where you'll be able to swap the code and profiles that you've come up with with other people.

Let me know if y'all have any additional questions I can answer. Igor did a q&a on reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/Coffee/comments/n8og6/this_looks_like_an_am...) so a lot of possible questions might be answered there, but ask away.

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