KegLand Questions and Answers

[user 17974]

I was thinking more of the BrewPi fermentation controller which allows you to control the temp of your fermentation fridge over WiFi/remotely (cold crash while your on holidays!!!) and also has support for the iSpindel and nice little graphs to track progress but i believe it also has mash control options also however i don't need this option as i have the Grainfather... Can you enlighten us a little more on what capabilities the new WiFi fridges will have, are they similar attributes to aforementioned BrewPi/BrewPiless? Thanks for the link.

I'm the guy that develops brewgenuity and also helping KL with the fridge. The fridge offers fermentation profiles, so it will automatically ramp up our down the temperature after a set period of time. This allows you to set and forget. You can see progression through charts on the website and on the fridge display as well. We are looking at integrating hydrometers in to the platform as well so you will be able to view the gravity over time on the charts.

With regards to Brewgenuity, this is a complete brewery automation and management solution. It uses a Raspberry Pi for the hardware and can be completely remote controlled from your phone or tablet from the other side of the world - because why not!? There is a Web portal and phone/tablet app. It includes recipe, batch, & inventory management. It can also be used to control fermentation with stepped profiles and includes tilt hydrometer integration. I'm currently working on automatically moving to the next profile step when the gravity reaches a set point - e.g. ramping up a few degrees for a diacytal rest or cold crashing when final gravity it reached.

It is not currently available to the public as there are costs involved running the server infrastructure and its not complete functionality wise. I'm also looking at ditching the raspberry pi and building an all in one board with WiFi and Bluetooth. The complete package will be cost of hardware + subscription service to cover the costs of running the infrastructure. Websites and databases aren't free...

 

[Truman42]

All sorted and just a little bit excited at a new and very different toy coming, 15 min sample rate is going to be perfect for my Kveik experiments. Thanks again cheers G

+1 for Bee2Gee and his Ipsindels. I have one running on fermentrack and its awesome. Take the time to calibrate it properly and you will find it stays fairly accurate.
(Ignore that spike in gravity on the 6th July. It was me playing around with the settings)

 

[f00b4r]

It is not currently available to the public as there are costs involved running the server infrastructure and its not complete functionality wise. I'm also looking at ditching the raspberry pi and building an all in one board with WiFi and Bluetooth. The complete package will be cost of hardware + subscription service to cover the costs of running the infrastructure. Websites and databases aren't free...

I'm looking forward to seeing it in action. One comment about your model though is that there have been high profiles cases before, even with brewing equipment, that used a subscription model; the people behind these have then suddenly left the market leaving people with very expensive paperweights. I understand that you have ongoing costs but what about committing to open sourcing the server component so that users could run their own if you ever decided to exit the market? Doing this or something similar to protect buyers might stop a lot of people from dismissing it, given what had been seen before.

 

[Ferment8]

@KegLand-com-au any update on an eta for the thermowell for the fermzilla?

 

[Grmblz]

One comment about your model though is that there have been high profiles cases before, even with brewing equipment, that used a subscription model; the people behind these have then suddenly left the market leaving people with very expensive paperweights. I understand that you have ongoing costs but what about committing to open sourcing the server component so that users could run their own if you ever decided to exit the market? Doing this or something similar to protect buyers might stop a lot of people from dismissing it, given what had been seen before.

+1 I refuse to do subscriptions precisely for this reason, and whilst there are costs involved the prime motivation for most subscription business models is greed.

 

[onemorecell]

+1 I refuse to do subscriptions precisely for this reason, and whilst there are costs involved the prime motivation for most subscription business models is greed.

isn't that the motivation for every single business model in the history of the world?
mate you don't have to grumble about literally everything just because it's your username

 

[Grmblz]

isn't that the motivation for every single business model in the history of the world?
mate you don't have to grumble about literally everything just because it's your username

I know but it's my second hobby and I do so enjoy it, surely you wouldn't begrudge an old man one of lifes little pleasures and most business models seek to make a profit, greed is about making excessive profit although how you quantify that is open to debate (maybe think KK prices before KL arrived) Cheers G

 

[KegLand-com-au]

@KegLand-com-au any update on an eta for the thermowell for the fermzilla?

Yes this is already on the way. Probably only a few weeks away now. We should have an arrival date on the website soon.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

+1 for Bee2Gee and his Ipsindels. I have one running on fermentrack and its awesome. Take the time to calibrate it properly and you will find it stays fairly accurate.
(Ignore that spike in gravity on the 6th July. It was me playing around with the settings)

View attachment 116391

Yes a few of our staff also use them and they really think they are awesome. Apparently the main thing to be careful with is making sure it's well calibrated but also be aware that pressure does seem to put the reading off by a few (maybe up to 5points) of gravity. A better custom made injection moulded housing would improve this but I guess as long as you are aware of this then you can factor this into the numbers you receive. At lease if the cap was improved with thicker plastic this would improve the situation. Other than that they seem to be really awesome and for the price you can't beat them.

 

[user 17974]

+1 I refuse to do subscriptions precisely for this reason, and whilst there are costs involved the prime motivation for most subscription business models is greed.

Yes, I must concede that the motivation for payment of a service built through years of development and ongoing infrastructure costs is solely greed.

 

[camNZ]

We are looking at integrating hydrometers in to the platform as well so you will be able to view the gravity over time on the charts.

Sounds great, but please make sure they work through SS fermenters

 

[Grmblz]

Yes, I must concede that the motivation for payment of a service built through years of development and ongoing infrastructure costs is solely greed.

Read my post again pal, firstly I said "most" and if you want to put yourself in that category that's fine by me, secondly I was just pointing out that I agree with f00b4r on his comment " a lot of people from dismissing it, given what had been seen before" I notice you didn't address his post? Are you going open or not? To greed or not to greed, THAT! is the question, and quite frankly my dear, I don't give a damn sorry OMC couldn't help meself.

 

[user 17974]

Read my post again pal, firstly I said "most" and if you want to put yourself in that category that's fine by me, secondly I was just pointing out that I agree with f00b4r on his comment " a lot of people from dismissing it, given what had been seen before" I notice you didn't address his post? Are you going open or not? To greed or not to greed, THAT! is the question, and quite frankly my dear, I don't give a damn sorry OMC couldn't help meself.

I'm assuming you have a job in which you are paid some form of periodic salary, much like a subscription model - in that you offer your time & service to an employer in exchange for money where the payments are made at regular intervals. I would love to stop by your place of employment and collect the free goods &/or services that you provide from this business.

 

[oddjob]

Got a co 2 regulator from Kegland never been right from the start sent it back under warranty ,Now i am getting all sorts of excuses if you bring the gear in from china have the decency to stand by your warranty .

 

[Meddo]

I'm the guy that develops brewgenuity and also helping KL with the fridge. The fridge offers fermentation profiles, so it will automatically ramp up our down the temperature after a set period of time. This allows you to set and forget. You can see progression through charts on the website and on the fridge display as well. We are looking at integrating hydrometers in to the platform as well so you will be able to view the gravity over time on the charts.

With regards to Brewgenuity, this is a complete brewery automation and management solution. It uses a Raspberry Pi for the hardware and can be completely remote controlled from your phone or tablet from the other side of the world - because why not!? There is a Web portal and phone/tablet app. It includes recipe, batch, & inventory management. It can also be used to control fermentation with stepped profiles and includes tilt hydrometer integration. I'm currently working on automatically moving to the next profile step when the gravity reaches a set point - e.g. ramping up a few degrees for a diacytal rest or cold crashing when final gravity it reached.

It is not currently available to the public as there are costs involved running the server infrastructure and its not complete functionality wise. I'm also looking at ditching the raspberry pi and building an all in one board with WiFi and Bluetooth. The complete package will be cost of hardware + subscription service to cover the costs of running the infrastructure. Websites and databases aren't free...

Looks like a pretty decent system. I flicked you an email yesterday but this post really covers everything I wanted to know.

Your business model is up to you of course, but if possible I'd hope to see continued support for the Raspberry Pi alongside any dedicated system. One of the great things about homebrewing is being able to repurpose equipment and components from one system to another, and from a personal perspective I'm much more likely to give Brewgenuity a trial run on my CBPi machine rather than go straight to an outlay on a dedicated hardware package.

If possible I'd also like to see a local version rather than relying on web servers, for many reasons including cost, security, and reliability. Of course this may not be what you're aiming for and if so fair enough.

Good stuff mate, it's good to see some competition for CBPi and BrewPi in this space.

 

[f00b4r]

@beercoder

For clarity I have nothing against a subscription model and although I prefer to buy and own outright if there are ongoing costs, like running a webserver, then a fair subscription model can protect/charge both the supplier and end user in a fair way. In my experience it will however put a significant number of people off buying into the product if there is total lock in with no come back if you decided to stop providing the service maybe even just months later.
I can understand if there is a relunctance to open source the server compenent (although you could commit to doing that if you exit the market) but you may also find benefits from doing so, in terms of people adding functionality. Maybe there are other options around these concerns too.

 

[fdsaasdf]

@beercoder

For clarity I have nothing against a subscription model and although I prefer to buy and own outright if there are ongoing costs, like running a webserver, then a fair subscription model can protect/charge both the supplier and end user in a fair way. In my experience it will however put a significant number of people off buying into the product if there is total lock in with no come back if you decided to stop providing the service maybe even just months later.
I can understand if there is a relunctance to open source the server compenent (although you could commit to doing that if you exit the market) but you may also find benefits from doing so, in terms of people adding functionality. Maybe there are other options around these concerns too.

I understand the desire to monetise the project, that's entirely up to the creator. However, this leaves the entire project risk with the one individual, and if they decide to change their mind etc then customers can be suddenly left with nothing. This is not trying to influence the creator's decision, it is simply reality.

Personally, I am not interested in subscription models, especially for hobbies. Additionally, although maybe not a core issue here, I personally don't want to be dependent on a connection to a service on the internet for my brewing equipment to function. I might not brew for 6 or more months if I don't have time - what's the point of paying for a service that is rarely used; or is unavailable when I want it.

This is in no way suggesting the creator has to do anything differently. Simply stating that if something is a product, I will pay for a product if appears to be worthwhile.

 

[peteru]

+1 for open source.

There are no business compatibility or profitability issues with providing a subscription model and open source. Microsoft, IBM and Oracle can make it work and turn huge profits at the same time. So can thousands of other organisations. There is no reason for KegLand to spend a lot of money on software development and then keep it locked up. The research shows that in majority of the cases customers will opt for a pre-packaged hosted solution. The same way that most users will prefer to buy an assembled, tested, working device over a plastic bag of parts that they need to solder.

From my point of view the equation is simple. No open APIs or open source, no buy. I'm not going to give any more of my $ to Grainfather or Inkbird because the software/firmware they ship with their products sucks and even though I have the skills, I can't fix it. I know I can make it better, but their business model will not let me make improvements. As far as I am considered, they are idiots, because I am willing to improve their product at no cost to them, but they prevent me from doing so.

KegLand, please do not fall into the same trap! When you pay a developer to create the firmware and software for your product, you should end up with the right to decide how to distribute that firmware and software. I strongly encourage you to open source everything you do so that you can benefit from the contributions of many more interested and talented parties*. There is no question that some of those potential contributors will be smarter (have better ideas) than the developers that you engaged in the first instance. Once you take the ego out of the equation, you will see that there is plenty of benefit to be had on all sides of the equation. The core developers get paid by KegLand to bring a product into existence. The users get the ability to make the product work for them. KegLand gets free product improvements. Original developer gets access to code improvements that they can use in future products.

There are no losers! It's win-win-win. A win to KegLand (free product improvements), a win to the customer (a product that can be modified to match any scenario) and a win for the original developer (free code fixes/improvements that can be used for future projects).

Now, as an average customer you might be thinking that you are not a coder and you can't do anything to improve the software/firmware. Sure, you can't do it yourself, but convincing someone else to do it is not hard. When you start whining about a problem here on the forums, someone like me (or any number of other people) will take notice and say "I can fix that". Next thing you know, there is a fix available. You get to download that fix and your life is better. If that fix is generally useful for majority of users, KegLand have the option of incorporating those fixes into the next revision of the product and also making it available to all existing customer as an upgrade. It can be a collaborative process, where some people have the ideas and some people have the skills. The monetary aspect is completely orthogonal to this. If a particular feature is hard to implement and no-one is doing it for free, then KegLand may need to pay someone to get it done. On the other hand if there are a few hundred of minor improvements that polish the product to perfection, KegLand could potential get those done for free by their end users.

Keep in mind the old, but fairly accurate Pareto Principle metric. The final 20% of a project takes 80% of the effort. When you solve this equation to optimise the cost, you can save 80% of your development cost by releasing an open source product that meets 80% of the end user requirements. The remaining 20% of the features that were missing, but were going to amount to 80% of the cost will be left as an exercise to invested parties. Bottom line is, you save 80% of the development cost by releasing a product that is 80% complete. By giving access to open source, you enable the community to provide the final 20% of the development at no cost to KegLand.

Step 3, 80% profit.

Happy to provide further analysis. I've been doing this for a few decades now, with many, many corporate wins...

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* There are a number open source projects that I/others started, that have subsequently been forked or enhanced by people that ended up taking the original ideas to the much higher levels, far exceeding what I/original authors were aiming for. This would have never happened if other parties did not have the "dumb arse" (first pass implementation) work as a basis for their inspired insights. Every piece of software can always be improved - unless you put in measures to prevent others from making those improvements.

Some guy called Isaac Newton might have said something about standing on shoulders of giants. I won't claim that there are any giants involved in this particular endeavour, but surely incremental improvement, (i.e. making things better as we learn more) is very much aligned with how KegLand portrays themselves.
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Open source for the win!

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[donald_trub]

Microsoft, IBM and Oracle are your shining light examples of open source companies??

 

[peteru]

No, not at all. Those are examples of companies that are seen as an anti-thesis to open source, yet they still make it work for them and turn a profit.

There seems to be this misconception in the general population that open source is not compatible with profit, which is clearly not the case.