$200 crowdsourced thermoblock with PID as standard

UNM

Don't know if anyone is interested in how this is progressing, but they now have a web site at http://zpmespresso.myshopify.com/ Even has its own forum. first production in May (Real Soon Now) and it is now officially named the 'Nocturn' gotta love the tag line 'engineered from the grounds up' 😃 The blog has a Forbes (Russia) magazine interview. One thing of note - no warranty. The people getting first machines didn't buy the machine, but invested in the project so it will be interesting how this one plays out legally if there are major problems.

RichardM

UNM wrote:

One thing of note - no warranty. The people getting first machines didn't buy the machine, but invested in the project so it will be interesting how this one plays out legally if there are major problems.

The same kind of thing stands up where people buy shares in a cow so they can drink unprocessed milk (read up about people selling "Bath Milk" in health food stores for drinking, which is illegal if they know people are drinking it). If it stands up there, I'd say it'd stand up for this scenario (in Australia anyway).

Hatchy

Pity only 240V if you'd donated $1000 It's closed up now - they got a fair sum too at over $300K!

UNM

240V should be trivial if designed for a global market - my gaggia can be converted between 110 and 220 in a few minutes simply by replacing the pump and changing element wiring. The PID has universal power and the two elements are designed to either be in parallel or series. I seem to recall the pump on the ZPM is supposed to be driven by a PWM signal and may not be a 110V pump (not certain of this). Perhaps the 2013 ETA for 220/240V is based on regulatory approval?

beanflying

Crawling it's way to some machines being finished. A cautionary tale for complex Kickstarter projects I guess. Update as of Yesterday http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zpmespresso/pid-controlled-espresso-machine/posts Still going to interesting to see the finished results in action.

Lacehim

Looks like an interesting project BF, but I can understand the slow place because putting a machine together from scratch is very time consuming. Good luck to them though.

derrilex

Fuck thats ugly

Lacehim

but cheap, and might be better than a crapy bottom of the range Sunbeam/Breville in the same price bracket!

derrilex

True, but it looks like a series 1 land rover. (no offense BF)

C-man

I don't see how they are controlling the pressure?

UNM

C-man wrote:

I don't see how they are controlling the pressure?

Arduino, I think.

C-man

pity about the voltage

UNM

C-man wrote:

pity about the voltage

Yes. Don't understand why they designed it that way. Easy to design for 110 or 220 using same components for both but wire differently.

C-man

because the Yanks think only they are important.

Lacehim

C-man wrote:

because the Yanks think only they are important.

They probably have a big enough market to start with just suppling the US, and they don't have to stuff about with international shipping. I'm sure that if it takes off they will make some changes and produce a 240v version.

C-man

C-man wrote:

because the Yanks think only they are important.

I know because I was one of them.

beanflying

I was having a poke around and there is a collection of Aussies who stumped up $$ to get a 110V machine when the first lot rolls off the line. To then have to turn around and buy a 12-1500W stepdown transformer for additional $. WTF would you want to do that to your kitchen for a start and to be the overseas tester for a machine with no performance history or locally supported warranty. Top that off with buying from a fresh startup with no history :doh: Based on niggles etc that even the big appliance makers have I would be letting the dust settle on batch one minimum and waiting for some real user feedback.

C-man

I agree, but lets keep an eve on it anyway as it has some interesting features. At least the transformer is cheaper than the extra 1K they wanted.

UNM

C-man wrote:

C-man wrote:

because the Yanks think only they are important.

I know because I was one of them.

according to all press I have read, Gleb and Igor are Russian. I haven't been following this project closely, but have not seen any answer for why they chose what seems to be the more difficult path of having a single 110 volt element rather than two that can be wired in series or parallel depending on destination country. The designers were well aware of this option during the funding phase prior to final prototyping. I was very keen on this way back at the beginning, but they do seem to have lost their way somewhat - the software is still really primitive which is extremely worrying for a supposedly open source project.

conikal

It seems they are well behind schedule with some basic issues to resolve, and not one prototype m/c to shout about. This latest issue with the thermoblock material is laughable. My impression is this is a bunch of tech geeks trying to find a trendy application for their electronic toys. :🙂 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zpmespresso/pid-controlled-espresso-machine/posts

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