100€, not $100. Looks like a neat unit, if big. How much was shipping, and what do you have it talking to?
Edit: they don't appear to ship to Australia - how'd you wrangle that?
RAPT Pill
- Thread starter kleggy
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Edit: they don't appear to ship to Australia - how'd you wrangle that?
I have used the Hydrom and it has more issues than the pill and also costs more money. It also has less functionality and cannot be paired with other devices such as the RAPT Temp Controller or RAPT Fermentation Chamber.
Next week we have a new release with more features such as profiles so you can set the temperature to change based on gravity reading. I can't see antyhing like this on the horizon with the Hydrom software.
In addition to this:
* When used side by side the Hydrom has worse reception when compared with the Pill
* The hydrom has higher battery consumption. Not a massive difference but it seems to consume about 8% more power meaning shorter battery life for the Hydrom
* The Hydrom is not sanitary in the way it's manufactured. Due to the fact that it's made from a preform rather than a purpose built container the threads are on the outside so the threads are what are immersed in liquid. The pill has the sealing o-ring on the liquid side so the threads are dry.
I should also say Pill Hydrometers outsell the Hydrom hydrometers by more than 50x so as you dont hear about many issues because not many Hydrom units exist.
Barleycorn Brewer
Active Member
I have also seen reviews on the Hydrom versus the Pill versus the Tilt, nice device where did you get it please.
Cian Doyle
Well-Known Member
A home brew shop on Smith Road Springvale.
Ah I see. $100 indeed. Why the coyness?
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I am Tjorben, the developer of the Hydrom.
That the Pill has more functions is clearly a lie, that makes me wonder where this idea comes from.
The Hydrom has 4 open interfaces (MQTT, TCP, HTTP and BLE) over two broadcast technologies.
You can use it with all major Brew cloud services.
That's just the beginning, plus the intuitive user interface that can be used locally WITHOUT the internet.
The Hydrom is 100% compatible with all interfaces that use the Tilt and iSpindle.
That's just the tip of the iceberg, the Pill doesn't have a feature that the Hydrom doesn't have except for a proprietary cloud service which locks the user in and that's more of a concept defect than a feature.
Can you go into more detail about the great new feature?
The feature makes no sense from my point of view. Why should the temperature change depend on the gravity?
Isn't it more likely that you mean the "temperature compensation" feature that Hydrom has integrated since version 1.3.4 - 2022-12-08?
This is based on the fact that with changed temperature free-floating hydrometers get a deviation.
I would also like to address the “facts” you present:
Can you please show us the study that says the Pill has better reception? I am always very cautious about such statements.
Without you presenting an independent study, I think this point can also be considered a lie.
The same goes for the battery consumption.
I would like to see an independent study.
Under what conditions was the series of measurements taken?
Was Bluetooth or WLAN tested?
Many questions to which I would like to have an answer.
Unfortunately, the last statement is also such a plain lie.
I understand the point, the case has no O-ring and is therefore a bit harder to clean.
But to assume that the hydrom is unhygienic due to manufacturing is wrong and can be easily refuted.
Gladly I would talk with an expert from your house about the issues.
These populist statements do not help anyone and I would ask to provide such only with evidence.
The Pill is 50x better?
Really?
I don't think I need to say anything about that, it goes with the rest.
A personal word from me:
Cloud devices like this only help the manufacturer.
The customer has nothing from this limitation.
Because I personally really hate these devices and would never buy them, I developed the Hydrom.
Open interfaces, no cloud constraint.
I wrote a blog on my site where I wrote 14 reasons against cloud products:
https://hydrom.io/blogs/news/cloud-compulsion-a-tendency-that-ruins-product-longevity
So that was my statement.
I hope I have to read less lies and massive exaggeration in the future.
Best regards,
Tjorben
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Shame you don't give very good customer service Tjorben, I tried to buy the Hydrom from your website last year, but after long delays with posting the item, and then bad attitude when I complain about the delay, you gave up and refunded my money with a "stuff you Aussie foreigner" & "I have enough customers here in Germany" attitude!
I wouldn't buy your product now anyway with that kind of international service, I would rather take my chances with the local manufacturers, who can take a bit of flak and respond with better service and new products as well.
Stick to your "friends" in Europe dude!
I wouldn't buy your product now anyway with that kind of international service, I would rather take my chances with the local manufacturers, who can take a bit of flak and respond with better service and new products as well.
Stick to your "friends" in Europe dude!
I am sorry that you have such a bad impression of my customer service.
I think I sent the package to Australia 2 times at my expense and it always came back through customs.
Therefore, I then said at some point, I have already paid so much on it that I have refunded the money 100%.
This point of criticism I have realized and with KegKing a very trustworthy partner who has a very successful customer service in Australia and New Zealand.
I am very happy to work with KegKing and can thus ensure that the Hydrom can be purchased in Australia just as enthusiastically as in Europe.
Thank you for your Feedback.
You did refund my money, that's not a problem, but you gave me the flick because I complained about the delay to repost with the right postage protocols that you as the seller were responsible for, all you had to say was I will get it right next time, but obviously it was to much bother for you, so you shut me down with bad attitude like it was my fault, and how dare I complain!
Customer service?
Customer service?
As I said I understand your point of view!You did refund my money, that's not a problem, but you gave me the flick because I complained about the delay to repost with the right postage protocols that you as the seller were responsible for, all you had to say was I will get it right next time, but obviously it was to much bother for you, so you shut me down with bad attitude like it was my fault, and how dare I complain!
Customer service?
I apologize.
It has been working on it.
Now KegKing is successfully selling the Hydrom and service has improved for Australian customers.
With the many Australian customers, there was unfortunately also a few times a problem with the delivery.
Please accept my apology, that's all I can do.
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Cian Doyle
Well-Known Member
Brilliant first post Tjorben, it was from reading your blog that convinced me that yours was the product for me, and so easy to set up. Looking forward to trying out.
I am further convinced I have made the right choice, with the usual rhetoric from Keg Land when they come across competition from a superior product than their own.
Thanks for that Cian. Can you please assist us all on the forum and explain how the product is "Superior" so we can better understand why the Hydrom is worth the additional cost. I would imagine you have some specifications you are referring to specifically?
I have purchased and used the Hydrom now in 3 different brews, it was purchased in Australia from those that I can't mention in this post but it is $100 australian + shipping. Just do a google search you will find it.
I also did some figures with the tilt pro and the Hydrom is very accurate, I do confess I have not used a Pill as personally I do not wish to enter into the Rapt area where you are confined to designated products and a purely cloud based area, this in my opinion locks you into buying from 1 manufacturer only so when a newer product comes out you sort of have to think hard before trying it, this is just me.
As for the Hydrom I have so far used it with Bluetooth, Brewersfriend, Brewfather and have setup a unidots page so it is very versatile, the pill can be used on the Rapt portal at the monemnt, no versatlity there.
The battery life of the Hydrom is very good, I did all 3 brews at 14 days in the fermentor sending every 15 mins, still had 61% of battery usage available so when I go back to my normal 30/45 minute send I think it will last quite some time. This was in Stainless Steel and Pet fermentors and I had very good reception in both. Cleaning is easy as with the Ispindel no o-ring is used nor is it needed, you just clean it.
As with all products I have heard bad about the Pill where people cant even get a new one onto the portal, where it stops communication etc.
As for customer service I have reached out to Tjorben a few times just to confirm things not really issues as I've had none and the reponse has been excellent, just use the contact email. Another bonus is that the instructions for Hydrom are very clear, easy and available on the website.
I also did some figures with the tilt pro and the Hydrom is very accurate, I do confess I have not used a Pill as personally I do not wish to enter into the Rapt area where you are confined to designated products and a purely cloud based area, this in my opinion locks you into buying from 1 manufacturer only so when a newer product comes out you sort of have to think hard before trying it, this is just me.
As for the Hydrom I have so far used it with Bluetooth, Brewersfriend, Brewfather and have setup a unidots page so it is very versatile, the pill can be used on the Rapt portal at the monemnt, no versatlity there.
The battery life of the Hydrom is very good, I did all 3 brews at 14 days in the fermentor sending every 15 mins, still had 61% of battery usage available so when I go back to my normal 30/45 minute send I think it will last quite some time. This was in Stainless Steel and Pet fermentors and I had very good reception in both. Cleaning is easy as with the Ispindel no o-ring is used nor is it needed, you just clean it.
As with all products I have heard bad about the Pill where people cant even get a new one onto the portal, where it stops communication etc.
As for customer service I have reached out to Tjorben a few times just to confirm things not really issues as I've had none and the reponse has been excellent, just use the contact email. Another bonus is that the instructions for Hydrom are very clear, easy and available on the website.
Sounds intriguing, I agree re having open access rather than a proprietary system - might be worth taking this to a new thread about floating hydrometers in general though. I've only used the Tilt so keen to hear experiences with the other options.
Hello Tjorben. Thanks for your response. It's great to hear from the product developer directly. I would agree my response previously was lacking detail so let me help to answer your questions.
The Pills Reception and Comparative Testing
After manufacturing the Pill version 1 (this one was never sold to the public) we send the board and housing to an RF laboratory in India for antenna tuning. We contract a company that specializes in this and they can be found here Home Page - PCB Artists. After antenna tuning was completed we then optimized the antenna to the particular product board/housing to give us the best results. As you can see our board differs from yours quite a bit. We found that the antenna simply gave us a better signal by putting the antenna on the top of the board as you can see here and ensuring we had no other electrical components around the antenna:
After the antenna tuning was completed we then started to manufacture the V2.0 boards. The antenna design has remained the same for the V2.1, V2.4 and V3.0 boards and thus has similar performance.
With that said we test all our products against whatever products we can get our hands on and if we ever find products that work better we generally go back to the drawing board and revise our own design to make sure it's the best product that we are able to make. We have done this comparative testing with the iSpindle, Tilt, BrewBrain and a few others smaller companies too. A youtube home brew channel originally informed us of your Hydrom product and we paid them to ship the Hydrom to us for the testing. The wifi testing involved putting the hydrometers into a stainless steel BrewBuilt fermenter and also into one of our FermZilla All Rounders that was placed inside our RAPT fermentation Chamber. The comparative signal strength between the Pill and the Hydrom is something that can easily be measured using this app here which is what we used:nRF Connect for Mobile – Apps on Google Play
Our Pill hydrometer is readily available in Europe so if you can repeat this testing Tjorben and let us know the results that would be appreciated. From our testing the Pill was 5dB -10dB better than the Hydrom over a 15minute period in the same fermenter types. My suspicion is that your antenna is being blocked by the PCB board itself and the components around the board so my suggestion to you is to move this to the top of the board so it's not being obstructed as much.
Power Consumption
We have done extensive testing on power consumption. There is only one product we have found that beats the pill with power consumption and this is the Tilt. The Tilt uses a different chipset that only has a low energy Bluetooth chip. As you know our product and several others on the market use the ESP32 and the main advantage of the ESP32 is that we can do WIFI and Bluetooth so having the option of WIFI does come at a slight additional cost to power consumption even when only using the device in bluetooth mode. The ESP32 can be highly optimized by taking the time to tweak the settings such as reducing clock speed, efficient code etc. We have gone through this process extensively and we are continuing to tweak the code. In fact we have another firmware release in the next few weeks that has a few more features which is one of the benefits of being cloud connected.
The power consumption tests that we carried out were done with the Power Profiler Kit II. This is a cheap but fantastic kit for measuring power of low energy devices and I would highly recommend you purchase one of these so you can also repeat the comparitive testing that we have done and report back to the forum to confirm or deny if my 8% is correct. We found the pill to be 8% more power efficient and the comparative testing was done with the same telemetry frequency. I will say if you repeat this test you have to make sure that the device is not in AP mode to be fair on this testing. As you know the Pill Hydrometer goes into AP mode after you disconnect it from power and also gives a higher burst of telemetry figures right after it's been disconnected from the charger. Then after 1hr or so it goes into a lower power mode and then just wakes up when telemetry is required. So in this testing we gave both devices 1hr before the power consumption started to get logged by the Power Profiler Kit II. We did this testing on Wifi mode but if you like I can repeat this testing with both products on Bluetooth mode too if you like.
Hygienic Thread Design
In food processing equipment it not considered to be good design to have the thread exposed to the liquid beverage. Here is a diagram comparing the Hydrom to the PET preform that you are using:
I can understand that preforms are cheap and they are produced in thousands so they are attractive to use if you do not want to spend any tooling cost. The issue is that preforms are designed to have the liquid beverage INSIDE the container so the threads are not exposed to the liquid. As you can see in the diagram above the preform will inevitable end up with liquid under the cap in the thread. If you are trying to sanitise this area how do you force sanitiser into this fissure prior to throwing into your fermenter? Tjorben you said in your response "to assume that the hydrom is unhygienic due to manufacturing is wrong and can be easily refuted". Maybe I am incorrect and the preform is actually a really great design for putting into your beer but to assist everyone on the forum can you please "easily refute" what I have said below. Is my diagram above incorrect? Does your cap seal in a different way? I am open to be convinced otherwise if I am wrong. Maybe we wasted many thousands of dollars designing a custom enclosure when we could have just purchased an off the shelf preform. This might be true.
Cloud Products
Yes I think the hydrom is great for people who want to use MQQT protocol or develop their own software or use their own server. With that said you can also do that with the pill if you want to. Our Bluetooth beacon that we give out is unencrypted and already several of our customers use this to send telemetry to their own devices so you can turn off wifi and never connect the pill to the internet if you want to do this. Furthermore we also have documented webhooks too so you can take the data from the Pill and then send this to your own private device too. Or if you want to have absolute control over the device then you can even develop your own firmware and upload it as we have exposed the serial pins on the PCB. So we encourage customers to use the pill and develop whatever independent solution they want even if it's completely independent from our RAPT cloud platform. With that said the Cloud platform is very useful to allow future firmware upgrades. To date the Pill Hydrometer has had 8 firmware updates with another update due in only a few weeks. We are continuing to optimise the to the firmware and this is especially important as we add more product to the familly of products. Without the cloud these firmware updates would be more difficult to implement. For instance in your comment "Why should the temperature change depend on the gravity?" I am flabbergasted by this comment as in the RAPT team we see this as a critical method to automate the brewing process. We are actively working on new firmware that will enable not only integration with gravity, and temperature but also spunding pressure out of the fermenter and pressure into the fermenter. The reason for this is so that we can implement profiles that will do something like:
Step 1: Ferment at a particular temperature at the start of the ferment.
Step 2: When the fermentation velocity slows down to 20 SG points per day ramp the temperature up to 20C
Step 3: When the fermentation velocity slows down to 5 SG point per day start diacetyl rest and go to 24C and maintain spunding pressure of 5psi
Step 4: When the fermentation velocity slows down to 1 SG per day start crash chill and increase pressure to 15psi to carbonate
Notice that this particular profile doesn't take into account number of days or time. Its a much more robust process and this is what we are heading towards. If you are doing a new recipe or using a new yeast or you simply hit different numbers during the mash process you don't actually know how many days into the process you need to step up the temperature. So current temperature/time profiles are insufficient. What we really want to do is maintain a certain level of yeast activity by changing temperature based on fermentation velocity.
The next firmware release for the Pill hydrometer has another figure in the telemetry called "fermentation velocity". To calculate this number the pill averages the previous 200 or so fermentation SG readings and determines the velocity figure.
Without devices talking to each other we simply cannot progress to smarter more robust profiles for fermentation. Just imagine being able to use a yeast for the first time, throw it into the fermenter and without knowing how many days is required to reach diacetyl rest or crash chill we can just leave the Pill and Fermentation chamber to determine the optimal results based on yeast activity. So I hope this answers your question "Why should the temperature change depend on the gravity?"
Tjorben I can understand that you are critical of what I have said and you should be as you don't know me. With that said if you think something I have said is a "lie" please let me know where we need to improve.
I think that you will find the Hydrom also uses the ESP32 chip, but you of course you would know this if you had used one as you stated I guess, Battery usage is very good 3 brews over 42 days at 15 minute intervals 39% battery usage in real time.
Cian Doyle
Well-Known Member
Your welcome. As you can see there isn't really anything to add seems to have been covered adequately by Tjorben and Neil. It may be a little bit dearer but I am a firm believer that you get what you pay for. I have not been reading, or watching reviews, most will know they are only to gull the gullible.
What I have been doing is reading customer's posts on various forums about tilt hydrometers, probably the only way to get honest feed back, and didn't find any to fault the Hydrom but plenty to fault others. I also want to control my own destiny with what I purchase, not as we have seen happen a server goes down then so hydrometer connected to it.
The RAPT Pill battery life is decent. I only charged the RAPT Pill for about 3 hours when it was new, to get it to 100%. Since then, I have done 5 batches, without recharging.
Going back through the batch history, that makes it about 80 days of reporting telemetry over WiFi every 15 minutes. The remaining battery is being reported at 77.3%. Compared to the Hydrom battery figures you qoute, the RAPT Pill appears to have much better battery life.
We should stop making these comparisons.
This is at best a subjective comparison of apples and oranges.
These are two completely different devices.
That's why the comparisons are complete nonsense.
And who cares if the device has to be charged 2 or 3 times a year?
There are really more important things.
Hi Kee,
Thank you very much for the kind if long winded message.
I congratulate you on all the work you put into the antenna design but doubt you realise that as a result you may well be exceeding the transmit power specified by the manufacturer. This potentially leads to other undesirable situations that are beyond the scope of this correspondence.
Now I also need to correct a statement I made. If you shut down your servers, the Pill will not be completely useless, but only 95%. Then you can only use the proprietary Bluetooth interface from all the features. That is very good, but then I wonder why you would not use an already existing Bluetooth interface like the Hydrom does? It would let your customers use the Hydrom services and who would say no to something extra for nothing?
There is little point of going into detail about the "readings". Honestly, I am surprised that you even publish such values here. You are only making it look worse but I guess its based on the hope that users without real technical knowledge and understanding might be swayed into believing this has some sort of basis in science.
Maybe you are not familiar that in the first semester of technical studies one learns the “Scientific Method.
Without going into the shortcomings of your statements, I would like to say that none of these absolute BASIC requirements were met. Here is some info material:
https://www.researchgate.net/public..._experimental_conditions_reproducibility_and_
You also jumped to conclusions about power useage. The Hydrom dynamically adjusts the transmit power to use less power. If you had measured properly and cleanly then you would have seen that.
As long as you can't present anything reliable, I suggest you hold back with unprovable comparison. It not only looks unprofessional but in fact is.
Even though you misspoke, I got your point about "unhygienic production" the first time around.
As I said, a little more effort to clean the hydrom. Thanks for explaining it in more detail.
Thanks for the cloud paragraph, even if it wasn't about the cloud. Of course customers can make up for your conceptual errors by programming their own but why not do it properly in the first place?
Not a single, real advantage of a proprietary cloud was offered up? Automatic updates? Dangerous, but also done better without cloud. Will introduce the hydrom with a warning sign this year too.
So there was a lot of text (I am told you have form on this) that is not very meaningful. I think you need to do better before you attack a competitors product with shallow understanding and lack of technical rigour.
You lied on the following points:
- Better reception of the Pill
- Less power consumption
- Unhygienic production of the Hydrom
- Pill is 50x better than the Hydrom.
I really wonder about your business practices. Competitors instead of perfecting their own product tell lies about competing products is not a great look. I wish you would not do that in the future or at least provide real evidence for your claims rather than making everything “cloudy”.
Best regards,
Tjorben
