Announcing the Decent Open Scale
I've been long writing about our “soon-to-be-released” Half Decent Scale, which has been delayed over and over. The reason: a dispute we haven't been able to resolve, with our subcontractor who makes it for me. Their quality hasn't been great (30% failure rate) and they doubled the price (from their quote just a month earlier) just as we got the firmware finalized. After waiting 6 months to try to resolve our differences, I've given up.
I've given up on our supplier, and charting a new course.
We're manufacturing our scale ourselves.
And we have made the firmware and case open source (GPLv3) https://github.com/decentespresso/openscale
There will eventually be several products under the “open scale” umbrella project. For now, though, we're going to make the “Half Decent Scale” immediately, with a simple interface that focuses on weight & time, and simple useability.
It uses the same metal chassis design as the Half Decent Scale. It is 14mm tall (FYI the Acaia Lunar is 15mm), and can hold two cups (for split espresso shots). Internally, it uses a ESP32 Arduino processor with an OLED display. It supports Bluetooth, Wifi and USB data. Rechargeable internal battery.
In the photo above, the new model is photographed on top, whereas the older model (with the 7 segment LED) is shown for comparison.
The firmware already supports advanced features like flow rate tracking, replaceable text on the display (under app control) and these will be available for free as firmware upgrades.
All this is possible, so quickly, by my having met Sofronio, who created an open source scale 3 years ago and has been working diligently on it for years. He's brought this work to Decent, and is now part of our permanent staff. Here's a 2 year old video showing him remaking a Hario scale http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf2agLBcwoI - his years of work on this project is what give this product such maturity.
I'm hoping to get this in your hands in August (at a very competitive price, I'm aiming for USD$99), and I'm really looking forward to having our “scale destiny” under our own control, like our espresso machines are. The past 6 years (I launched the Decent Scale in 2018!) have been slow and frustrating, because of that lack of control, to do what I know, needs to be done.
-john
Updated 2024/04/11