TallDan wrote:The new foam:
Could it fit, or be made to fit the old suitcase?
Would that seem like a worthwhile upgrade?

Unfortunately, the new foam won't fit in an old suitcase, as the insides are a bit different.

-john

Comparing metal and plastic espresso mirrors

The mirror lip on the Decent is made of plastic, stuck on with double sided tape. We settled on this design so that if the mirror became damaged, it could be easily replaced.

We recently tried some stainless steel mirrors. These have the advantage of being sturdier, and they can be "locked on" with a magnet behind the lip, instead of using tape. That means you can easily remove it, such as if you wanted to do a deep clean of the machine. It also makes replacement easier.

From a distance, the stainless steel mirror looks just fine (top right photo). Comparing the two, you can see that the stainless mirror is darker, and the optical quality is not as good as the plastic mirror (compare the vertical black line reflected in the mirror, bottom right)

I realize that this is not astronomy we're doing here: amazing optical quality is not the most vital thing when looking at an espresso shot pouring out.

What I don't know is if the optical compromise is worth it in exchange for the increased durability and ease of removal. What do you think?

-john

decent_espresso wrote: And we were out by........1 piece.

Such a tease; what was the one piece!? Even if you don't hit that elusive zero, I'd wager it won't be one of those pieces that corrupts your count next time around!

Relative to the question of plastic vs steel mirror. I'd vote without hesitation for the steel.

1. Steel less prone to scratch.
2. Magnets are perfect, if it is damaged order a new one
3. If someone really wants optical clarity sell a mirrored or chromed steel that would work with the magnets as an upgrade.

And could the magnets not be glued to the plastic one too to make swapping easier?

Hello John, I was wondering if you have any plans with further enhancing the temperature profiling? As I understand it the Decent allows you to decrease or increase the water temperature to an extent, but if you wanted a blooming espresso shot (15 second bloom at 100 degrees celsius), and then lower to 88 degrees which gradually decreases to 82 over the next 20 seconds or so. It's a bit of an arbitrary profile but to my understanding no machine can do it.

I think it would be also interesting if you could do a pre-infusion at 80 degrees for light roast -- followed by a 93 degree infusion. Similar to a slayer shot but with this added temperature profile. Doing some of these shots would require a second water chamber so you can prepare the water beforehand and alternate between the two water chambers (And have enough time to purge one chamber if the water it contains is too cool before filling it up with hotter water).

Note: I don't own a Decent, I have a friend that lets me play with it, so excuse me if my assumptions of the Decent are wrong. I have plans to buy one soon but if there are plans to improve temperature profiling I'd prefer to wait until it comes into fruition.

CincyWes wrote:Relative to the question of plastic vs steel mirror. I'd vote without hesitation for the steel.

1. Steel less prone to scratch.
2. Magnets are perfect, if it is damaged order a new one
3. If someone really wants optical clarity sell a mirrored or chromed steel that would work with the magnets as an upgrade.

The report on Diaspora that I received is that stainless steel mirrors are MORE prone to scratching than plastic, and that glass mirrors are the best.

Here is what he wrote:

umpqua5 wrote:And could the magnets not be glued to the plastic one too to make swapping easier?

We tried that, but we don't like how it lifts the mirror up

Dead tablets, brought back to life

Because Android does not have any "smart charging" feature, we discovered last year that many of our Decent-supplied tablets would sometimes swell up. Apple used to have this problem with their laptops and tablets, until they added smart charging to iOS.

We've since added Smart Charging to our de1app (and to the tablet firmware too), but about 30% of the tablets we've sent have been replaced under warranty. We offer a $50 gift certificate to anyone who sends in their now-dead tablet to us.

And now we've started to recondition the previously-dead tablets. We remove the battery, rework the tablet using our battery-free kit, reformat and retest the tablet.

These battery-free tablets are now available for purchase https://decentespresso.com/accessories and they're also available as a no-cost customization for new DE1 customers.

And we owe it all to Eli and Josh from Ground Control. Years ago, they let us share their trade show booth at a Los Angeles trade show (just weeks before COVID showed up!) and explained to me how the touch-screen interface to their brewer works. They take Samsung phones, remove the battery, and replace it with their own circuit.

Josh kindly shared their schematic with us. We couldn't use it as-is on our tablets, but it showed us the way to make it work. Another year of trying various circuits in the real world, and we finally solved it.

We also cheaply sell the battery-free circuit https://decentespresso.com/c?filter=battery and have videos about it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCkP_AUMZzw and showing how you can do it to your own tablet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxqdmio7oes

-john

Regarding the mirror, I lean towards staying with plastic. I don't like what often seems like mindless "premiumization" of consumer products. Mobile phones being a great example. I preferred high quality plastic phones with no case to today's slippery, heavy, fragile jewels that I have to slap a - yep, plastic - case on.

I.e., if the premiumization is just for sake of making it seem more beautiful - no, thank you. And that's what it's looking like like in this case (not in terms of your intent, but how it turned out). The stainless panel is for seeing, yet the change in material makes it worse in that function, both in optical quality and durability of that quality.

If someone really wants to get behind the mirror to clean, perhaps a guitar pick (to pry off) and a roll of double stick tape (to replace old) would suffice. That said - I don't have real world experience of how much the mirror collects gunk. If it is prone, maybe the clean-ability is a key functional advantage.