A Decent timeline

The most important number I track is "number of new machines shipped per month". It's a "cut through the bullsh**" kind of number.

Here's several years of that:




I don't want to jinx it, but we seem to be sustaining another doubling of our ability ship machines, and I hope to ship around 200 DE1 this month. That'll be almost twice our previous (one-time) record.

Since we're building 50 machines at once, sometimes we make more of a specific model that we have orders for. That means some models are coming into stock and can "ship immediately".

The first model of ours to now be back in stock is the DE1XL Black 220V model, and there's a dozen of them ready to ship.




Here's what happening right now at the Decent factory, here in Hong Kong:



Even though our queue is 227 machines deep, the orders are spread across many models, so over the next 2 weeks, there's a good chance a small number of these models will come back into stock as well.

I don't know yet if we'll manage to have a empty queue for Christmas, but it now seems likely we'll have a few different models available before Christmas, for anyone who wants to give a super-nice gift.

-john

The tablet shortage, solved

I've mentioned in a few previous posts, that we were running out of black Android tablets, and this could prevent us from shipping the espresso machines.

We've in fact run out completely of our black tablets, which is why we made a bunch of white DE1XL models two weeks ago, as we still had plenty of white Android tablets. Those while DE1XL models promptly sold out, and then we ran out of one of the white chassis parts (the tablet stand, sigh) as we'd fired our previous chassis maker for their poor quality. Welcome to the world of manufacturing during the age of COVID.

On the positive side, yesterday we received two samples of the white DE1XL parts from our new support (who we really like) and the workmanship is fantastic. We've had a really hard time getting flawless white chassis.





The black Android tablets were ordered 5 months ago, were were supposed to be here 3 months ago. However, COVID caused shortages in this resolution of LCD screen. Only poor quality screens were available for sale. Our manufacturer (a company named PIPO, that makes the tablets for Archos, which is a big name in Europe) wanted me to compromise and accept the lower quality screens, as that was all that was available. Since I didn't compromise (surprise!), we ran out of PIPO tablets and we were delayed another 3 months to get the good screens (in theory, coming next month, we'll see).

However, as long as there's money in the bank, there's a way to solve this problem!

With the help of my I.T. guy Ricky, we bought samples of most of the 8" Android tablets being currently made, all those available at a screen resolution of 1280x800. And all with ample stock, available to ship immediately.

We found that a company named "Teclast" has more or less cornered the market, as they're making current-spec tablets for this size and resolution. No other company seems to be investing serious R&D into this form factor, since Samsung stopped making them. The Android world has more-or-less abandoned tablets (except for the ultra high end), since Phones are where the Android-action is at.

The picture above shows the new tablet (left) and the old tablet (right). It's hard to see much difference in the photo (they're boot good screens), except for:
- the green color is overly vivid on the old PIPO tablet
- there's a bit of light leakage on the left edge of the new Teclast tablet
- The Teclast screen is a bit sharper.

However, the Teclast tablets use current CPUs (8 cores vs 4 cores) and are 45% faster than our usual tablets. The Teclast screens use IPS technology, as opposed to LCD, for truer whites and sharper text. It's also Android 9, which is more current.





To get us through this shortage, we've bought 200pcs of the Teclast P80X tablet, directly from Teclast.

Just to be 100% transparent, these tablets are available on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/TECLAST-Processo ... ref=sr_1_1
and that 10+ price on Amazon is the same price we paid.

Here are the tablet specs: http://teclast.com/en/zt/P80X/

Over the next few weeks, these are the tablets that will come with DE1 machines. After the 2000pcs of the PIPO tablets come in (Android that's what we'll go back to. We ordered them 5 months ago. There's nothing at all wrong with them, and they have no brand labelling, which I think looks nicer on the machine. In a year, there's a good chance we'll move to Teclast, especially if I can negotiate with them to get an Android build with most of the Google bloat removed.

The PIPO tablets all have developer-access "root" enabled and a really, really clean Android build made just for us, according to my specs. That's very hard to get in the commercial world. The custom Android build makes them run a lot faster than Geekbench indicates, because there's no Googlebloat running in the background.

Some of you might remember Ricky from when we hired him a few years ago. He had just been discharged from the hospital for cancer, having had a good part of his throat removed. I considered ourselves lucky to be able to hire an IT guy with 20 years experience, at a reasonable salary (the government paid 75% of his salary for the first 9 months). He's now mostly recovered and works full time for us. Though he'll never be able to eat solid food, he's a bit of a work addict, as he's well loved here at Decent, and craved to be more than a "patient" for the rest of his life. I couldn't have gotten out of this situation without him.

-john

John I have a question I haven't been able to find an answer on. I read a lot about the quick warmup time of the decent machine but I'm curious, can the machine be on 24/7? If so, any worries about increased wear or anything other than power consumption?

Absolutely no problem being on all the time. I'm not sure if you mean "powered on" or "warm, ready to make espresso", however.

We recommend that people leave their DE1 on constantly, so that the tablet stays fully charged.

However, to save energy, generally the machine is set to cool down after a set amount of time of inactivity.

You can set the "inactivity cool down" time, as well as the scheduler, or turn them both off, as you like.

Here is what that looks like:

Sorry for the lack of clarification! I meant warmed up and ready to make espresso! Is that hard on the machine at all?

Totally fine for it to be hot & ready at all times, as it's made to be temperature stable internally, and stays around 55ºC inside. A fan automatically turns on if the inside gets too hot.

The AC PCB has a metal back to it, and is flat mounted to the metal chassis itself, which then acts as a huge heat sink.




The fan on the back is between the chassis and a back plastic panel, so that when the fan turns on, it drags cool air from the sides:



into a fan located around the center of the back panel, into the PCB compartment.

Hot air comes out the sides:



hot air also comes out the front, under the mirrored lip:



You can see the fan location here, with the back panel removed, as well as the slots cut out for the AC PCB mounting. The cable in the back is the repairman's USB port, which I'm using to monitor the machine next to me as I program. It's not installed normally.

Cake for staff, now GAAP compliant

Last week Marius wrote me that he'd like to cancel his $99 order for the Decent Scale, because it's so late in shipping that he's bought a different scale elsewhere. Sorry! But here's the twist: he'd prefer we keep the $99 and use it to buy the Decent staff some cake. Wow!

Marius certainly didn't mean to do this, but this caused a good 30 minutes of intense concentration in the Decent accounting department, because "this doesn't usually happen under GAAP accounting rules" (!)

So, a bit of "creative accounting" (cough) later, we now have two "products" in our catalog, that people can buy:
https://decentespresso.com/c?s=888+1+889+1

When then adds one of the staff's two favorite cakes from Lucullus http://lucullus.com.hk/





Seriously (grin), if you'd like to buy us a cake, now at last there's an easy way to do it.

Just add it to your shopping cart.

You can then photoshop this image with "Thank you <your name here>"




As I write this, Hong Kong Coffee Educator Celia Wong (who just bought a white DE1XL) https://www.instagram.com/chingchingcelia/ is on a bus, headed here with homemade biscuits.





The fact that this keeps happening (customer buying and making us cake, to thank us) is completely blowing my mind.

-john

decent_espresso wrote:For me, selling cosmetic-failed goods at a significantly lower prices is a good way to "meet the market". We're getting our products into the hands of people who want them, at a price they can afford.

Sometimes, we don't make any money doing so, but at least we don't waste.

-john

Well, I for one find this a good thing for the brand. If anything bring that out more, so that it is known right out from the get-go this is your company policy. This is getting more and more important branding wise. Many big enterprises work hard to get labeled as "green companies" but the exact details on what they are actually doing often is too vague.

v1.4 and the state of R&D

I've previously mentioned that while we are currently building our v1.4 espresso machines, we had planned on releasing v1.5 starting in March 1.5.

Plans have changed.
- we're be making the v1.4 model for another year and a half
- There's nothing important that's wrong with this model, and nothing "wow" that we can do quickly. The "big stuff" has been taken care of.
- I've given Ray, Ben and my other R&D engineers a full year to work on "big ideas", without the pressure of a near-term deadline.
- We're planning on version 1.5 to come out in early 2022.
- I can't even speculate what will be in that version, because it's very much pure R&D, that may or may not succeed.

I can tell you what we will not be doing:
- no vibration dampening on the pumps,
- nor moving to a different vibration pump manufacturer.


Why not?

We're thoroughly tested the German and Swiss engineered vibration dampeners, and they don't last long. Typically, after 1000 to 2000 espresso, they literally explode. I don't think we can easily do better than Jura or Siemens: those are some of the smartest engineers, anywhere.

We've tested a number of alternative vibe pumps. All are Italian, and we think it's too risky to switch to them.

Firstly, Italian manufacturing is in a COVID-induced mess at the moment. We've been having trouble getting samples, specs, or even pump engineers to talk to, for almost 10 months. The commercial espresso machine business will likely see a lot of "contraction" (that's biz-speak for closures, bankruptcies, fire-sales and cheap acquisitions) as cafes worldwide go out of business, stop buying commercial machines, and prepare for much lower throughput. This will likely have a knock-on effect to the parts-supplier ecosystem in Italy. I prefer to be conservative, and stick with the suppliers we have who are reliable and globalized.

Our existing pumps (and valves) are designed by ODE, a massive Italian company that also makes for La Marzocco and others. However, they are made in China, and so they are currently available, and reliably so. And ODE's engineers are here in Hong Kong, so we can take the subway to visit them.


Trying to make better coffee

Since May 2019, we've had an "elite" group of our customers who receive speculative designs from us, and give us feedback in a private forum we run with them.

One point of focus has been water distribution on the the coffee puck. We think we've found a design that "everyone agrees is not worse, and some thing is better". We're also using a resin called Ultem to make these water distribution parts, as they need less cleaning, and not pre-heating

However, the prototype pieces we made were 100% ultem, not glass reinforced, and after a year, some have developed cracks, such as this one from Luca :





Ben has taken what we've learned in a year of field testing, and produced another round of water distribution designs. These are all made with 30% glass reinforced Ultem, and we want to have them in heavy real-world use for a year. It is a super easy part for a customer to replace themselves (one screw, 2 minutes) but it's better if they don't have to.

Because of COVID, we've also had huge difficulties getting prototype parts made.

These parts in the photo are 5 months late and arrived just a few days ago.
- There are many new designs of Ultem water distribution parts,
- as well as cast stainless steel group head parts (instead of CNCed brass).
- There is also a "unified manifold" design that would halve the number of water tubes, thus simplifying assembly and making space inside.

Here is what one of our "gift boxes" (grin) looks like for one of our testers:





We're fairly sure that we'll be able to slightly improve the water distribution onto the puck with this research. Once we can, we'll make that upgraded part available as an inexpensive self-upgrade for all existing customers. There's a good chance that will be available to existing customers before v1.5 comes out.







The "Golden Era" espresso machine from Decent

The feedback to omri almagor omri and me, about the SMORG designs (Sci Smorg vs Golden Era Smorg) was that people overwhelmingly preferred (and many loved) the "Golden Era" model. So this is what we're going to focus on delivering in 2021.

The crazy "Sci-Smorg" design is on the storage shelf for now, perhaps to be brought back to life after we've done the model people really, really want.

Omri has some more design work to do on Golden Era Smorg (the GE1?), and so expect to see renders with ideas in the months to come.

-john