MTLexpress wrote:I was more concerned about AM/PM. It's pretty obvious for us In Quebec because of the proximity and prevalence of the English culture, but I'm not so sure it's obvious to the Français... Any opinion?

If "AM/PM" is not appropriate in French (or any other language) then the best solution is for the French translation to add verbiage to its translation.

Here's the French version of that page: (with some new English phrases that still need translating).


I'll note, however, that the head translator for the French version est lui-même Québécois, et donc il se peut que tu aies raison, et qu'un habitant de l'hexagone doive vérifier qu'il n'y a pas de problème.

Come to mention it, I'm in London and then France (Bordeaux, Paris, Lyon) in June, with the release candidate DE1+ for a mini tour. A close friend of mine in France recently lost his wife and I'm using a mini-France-marketing-tour as an excuse to visit. If you see me in France, he might be with me, and offer him a drink.

Speaking of Europe, I'll also be in Berlin in September for Coffee Fest, and Scott Rao and I might do an October tour of Europe together.

MTLexpress wrote:On the other hand, as John mentioned, 24h will be the default so the user would have to have toggled it himself to land on AM/PM. Besides, I suspect the Decent Espresso adopters will tend to be of the tweaking type - even more so for the DE1+ and subsequent higher end models- and toggle everything at least once just for the heck of it...

That's my assumption, and people with tablets are used to tapping everything to see what happens.

We're trying to slow down the high pressure water after an espresso shot, so you don't get splashed when the water goes into the drip tray. Here's a slow motion video of our prototype idea, where water goes into a kind of cyclone, and can't exit until it slows down, because the hole is in the opposite direction of the cyclone. This is one of the last things on our "to-figure-out" list before our design freeze in a few days.

Will that be easily cleaned? Looks like it has potential for clogging after considerable use.

It's definitely a possibility, yes. We're going to keep the plastic cover on it, easily removed, even for customers, so you can see if there's any clogging and easily clean it. You can get at this part by simply removing the top cover, no other disassembly needed.

However, group head flushes tend to be "grey water" and not so particulate heavy. In that video, that's real flush water you're seeing, from an espresso that just finished.

I didn't mention it, but that diffuser has been in constant use for about week, and it's still pristine.

In case you're curious, here's where the flush diffuser will sit, it's quite easily accessible.

The diffuser is located in such a way that if it really clogs constantly, and that just can't be helped, then a longer tube from the flush valve can be swapped in and send higher velocity water directly into the drip tray. If that's ever needed, we'll send you the part and you just need a pair of needle nose pliers to take the clip out, put a new tube in, and reclip it.

Many thanks for that thorough explanation. Much appreciated. My old HX machine [being replaced with a DE1+!] just has a tube straight into driptray and never splashes or bothers me, so the DE soluton seemed rather complex for a simple matter. But seeing its really quite clean 'grey water' I can see its a non issue.

One the remaining things for us to figure out is how to discreetly have a USB power connector near the tablet.

Today we received some really tiny parts as samples from a manufacturer, including a tiny female USB-A plug that we didn't recognize.

After some googling, we found out that there is a "Micro USB-A" specification (who knew?), as part of the "on the go" extension to USB 2. It hugely drops the footprint of the connector on the front splash panel (to about 6mm x 3mm : you can see the size difference in the photo below) and the one we received even has a waterproofing gasket around it.

Here's a size comparison between the two identically functioning connectors. One nice thing about this standard is that the normal "usb micro b" cable plugs into the "micro usb a" so you can use an easily-purchased usb-micro to usb-micro cable. Of course, we'll supply you with a cable with the DE1 that's just the right length.

decent_espresso wrote:After some googling, we found out that there is a "Micro USB-A" specification (who knew?), as part of the "on the go" extension to USB 2. It hugely drops the footprint of the connector on the front splash panel (to about 6mm x 3mm : you can see the size difference in the photo below) and the one we received even has a waterproofing gasket around it.

This is a bad idea.

The OTG spec provides for a micro-A plug (the male piece) as well as the old micro-B plug. The only receptacle (female) the micro-A plug fits in is a micro-AB receptacle. The micro-AB receptacle looks like the female version of the micro-A plug, but also accepts a micro-B plug.

This is fine for an OTG receptacle, because the OTG spec requires that an OTG device can act as host or peripheral. So nothing bad happens if the micro-B plug is inserted into an OTG device via the micro-AB receptacle.

Critically, this means that on a device with a micro-AB receptacle, it must be ok if the user plugs a micro-B plug in, where the other end of the cable is plugged into a power source. That is, a micro-AB receptacle equipped device must be ok with being supplied with 5V via the receptacle.

If you are including some circuitry that makes it ok for someone to plug an outside power source into the USB receptacle on the machine, then I withdraw my concern. But if the USB port does not have that circuitry, plugging any outside power source into the device will likely fry the outside power source, and quite possibly will fry the USB port on the machine.

This is why USB 2.0 ports have A and B connections, to avoid this problem. The OTG spec allows a port that can accept A or B plugs, but that is only because OTG devices have to be ok with supplying OR receiving power. So unless the DE1 will actually be OTG compliant, please, please, please don't do this.

decent_espresso wrote:One nice thing about this standard is that the normal "usb micro b" cable plugs into the "micro usb a" so you can use an easily-purchased usb-micro to usb-micro cable. Of course, we'll supply you with a cable with the DE1 that's just the right length.

The only remotely easily purchased micro-micro cables should be micro-A plug to micro-B plug (an OTG cable), or micro-B plug to micro-B receptacle. There should not be a micro-B plug to micro-B plug cable, as that does not meet the USB spec, as illustrated in the "USB cables matrix" on this page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Host_ ... eceptacles

decent_espresso wrote:The DE1+ is what we want to sell you if you want advanced control over espresso.

For now a DE1 will do (too many kids activities during the week = no time). Clicked a few buttons and got a "Yay"
Now I need to learn TCL/Tk (only know Perl/Tk) and maybe grab a Redbear (did some Ardnuino Uno dev.)

roastini wrote:"USB cables matrix"

Very helpful - always wondered.
The article also mentions "Non-standard reversible micro-B plug connector".

patrickff wrote:Now I need to learn TCL/Tk (only know Perl/Tk) and maybe grab a Redbear (did some Ardnuino Uno dev.)

I just picked up a Redbear nano. The Arduino support is still in beta. I haven't tried it yet, but did a quick thing using the mbed dev environment (c++). Haven't had a chance to really dig in yet, though.