ZPM: The Kickstarter Failure That Revolutionised Espresso

Just wanted to follow up on a few comments here.
Firstly: did not expect this many Stargate references in the comments.
Secondly: the PID. I want to add a couple of bits of detail. Firstly, I was put off from excess tinkering by the fact that any changes to settings didn’t save beyond switching the machine off. Secondly, I did mess around with them a bit (having done something me reading to try and get some guidance) and nothing I did had any real impact on performance. (Though, like I said, I don’t really know much about programming PIDs.)

A thermoblock is never going to be temperature stable (whilst not being gargantuan)

I really wish a car or piano manufacturer would be willing to take a hit by making a range of coffee machines from £100-£250 for a automatic coffee machine. And from £300-£1000 could be switched between manual to automatic. Tesla could downsize some of their Space X technologies to help make some great coffee machine. Of course Bugatti could make one while taking a hit, but since they sell some of the worlds most expensive coffee at their dealerships.

The average consumer would have to sell a Liver and one Lung to possibly afford one on a monthly fee. Now who else could make one, I think James should team up with a company to design some coffee machines costing £100, £250, £500, £800 and £1000 so everyone can afford a decent machine. Go on James you know, your knowledge with a big company could help save people from the horrors and frustration when it comes to buying their first, second or third machine.

I think the problem was really the price point. I've noticed the same thing with 3D printing where you can sure as hell save a buck if you really want, but there is absolutely a sacrifice in quality.

I knew the team at ZPM and had coffee from their prototypes. It wasn't a Stradivarius but neither was it a toy guitar. The price was a steal. I think all the other espresso machines for $200 at that time were glorified electric mokha pots.

My read is that their technical thesis was very sound — the power of digital control systems to control brewing parameters was eclipsing the brute force of giant boilers and finicky mechanical preinfusion devices.

But hardware can be a place where valid theses die for lack of time, space, and operational expertise. Decent, as John notes, eventually proved ZPM right in their most core belief. You can coax the "cheap" parts to do your bidding.

The "back that ass up" thing is so indicative of late 00s/early 10's food culture. Very glad that's gone.

3D printer kit aethstetics

Hehehe, that orange. "Wake up, Dr Freeman. Wake up and smell the coffee"

The orange makes it look like a B&Q own brand special

i have now a new goal to make an arduino espresso machine not a lot of open source projects covering this, wish me luck people

I've backed some KickStarter campaigns with a lot of anger, and let me tell you: that's A LOT of anger!
The funny thing is that it doesn't seem to be mainly focused on whether the product arrives or not, but whether the campaigners keep making promises they fail to keep.
For example the Kanso towels. They kept saying "we'll send them off within 2-3 weeks time", then months went by without an update, before they said "oh, something happened, but NOW!". Time and time again. And people became so much angrier at them than at other projects I was backing which had spent a lot longer time to finish their projects, but didn't really say it's coming either

Well if existed for only 200$ it would have been absolutely bang for money who cares about accuracy at this price range if it can brew nice cup of expresso i mean look at Morphy Richards thrashy 200$ expresso that is horrible in every freaking aspect don't even mention the bar pressure and brew absolutely thrash coffee + it's fully made out of plastic.

When he said decent would be taking inspiration from ZPM I thought the idea of a low price would carry over, but the cheapest decent machine is over $3000. Goddamn

there's not a single career barista in these comments and it shows

This is clearly a prototype and if they had more money they probably would have made it eventually. This is also part of the testing phase and part of the risk of Kickstarter

With enough of these coffee machines we could project a sustained energy beam through a orbital Stargate!

turing test the machine

it was a very successful scam

A firmware developer just choked on his coffee seeing his butt joke on this dev unit show up in front of a million people on Youtube.

There is no way that "back that a** up" would of made it to production, it did give me a good laugh though