RAPT Pill

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I'm surprised that the forum management has not required Tjorben to pay up for a AHB Sponsor membership to continue posting about his product. As far as I know, clause 5.2 has been used in the past. Maybe the current lot of moderators are a bit more relaxed than those in the past. Maybe it's an axe waiting to fall.
 
I'm surprised that the forum management has not required Tjorben to pay up for a AHB Sponsor membership to continue posting about his product. As far as I know, clause 5.2 has been used in the past. Maybe the current lot of moderators are a bit more relaxed than those in the past. Maybe it's an axe waiting to fall.
I think that all the moderators have done is allowed Tjorben to exercise his right of reply, nothing more. You can't deny his right to do so surely? Look at how the views of this thread jumped after post 62, certainly attracted a lot of interest on the forum.
 
I think that all the moderators have done is allowed Tjorben to exercise his right of reply, nothing more. You can't deny his right to do so surely? Look at how the views of this thread jumped after post 62, certainly attracted a lot of interest on the forum.

i am certain Tjorben was only exercising his right of reply , while it has attracted interest , but has it sparked interest for the right reasons or has it attracted the interest to throw another grenade at Kegland by the members of this forum
 
i am certain Tjorben was only exercising his right of reply , while it has attracted interest , but has it sparked interest for the right reasons or has it attracted the interest to throw another grenade at Kegland by the members of this forum
I haven't seen any animosity towards Keg Land? As for grenade throwing the whole idea is to let the damn thing go not let it blow up in ones face. Which certainly happened here.
 
I would argue there is genuine genuine interest.

When the pill was first brought to my attention I thought it was something I would definitely buy especially at the price advertised. When released it sold it out straight away or before I could get one at least. Then it seemed people were having connectivity or calibration issues and the price increased. I lost interest a bit because in reality it's not really a necessary purchase. When I started looking again is about the time the RAPT fridge came out. Again seemed like people were having issues with calibration and and the devices all working together as they were designed too do.

When I heard about the Hydrom my interest was peaked again.
which has brought me to the threads that seem popular at the moment. Seems both parties have been active in defending their products as anyone would who has put time and effort into building something.

In short, calm down with accusations against moderators and what not. They are volunteers for what seems to be a rather thankless job.
 
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

I am more than happy to take your point into consideration but I am offended that you have said I have "lied" on these points below:

Tjorben said:
You lied(referring to us) on the following points:
- Better reception of the Pill
- Less power consumption
- Unhygienic production of the Hydrom
- Pill is 50x better than the Hydrom.


If I have lied about the reception and power consumption then let me know which figure is incorrect. I explained the method and results of the testing and please let me know exactly how the testing should be carried out and I will repeat the tests again. Also you have not provided any data on your unit and I would like you to present this because I assume you have not done the testing yourself. If you prefer I can do a video showing the testing comparison if you like so you can see how the tests are being performed and if there is something in the video that I have failed to do correctly this will hopefully be evident in the video. Please let me know if this would be an acceptable path forward for you.

I find it strange that you say I have "lied" about the unhygienic design but in the same reply you also confirm that it "requires more effort to clean". Threads immersed in the beverage is widely recognized as unhygienic. If however you genuinely believe that I have "lied" can you please explain how your thread is hygienic and also tell us how the cleaning process before putting in the fermenter should be done? Is there a special brush that you recommend? What is your cleaning procedure? Perhaps you have a more detailed cleaning procedure to clean out this fissure that I am not aware of.

I also did not make the claim that the "pill is 50x better". If you read my post I said the Pill sells more than 50x more units. So before you say I have "lied" I might be more correct of you to start by reading what I said in the first place.
 
Look at how the views of this thread jumped after post 62, certainly attracted a lot of interest on the forum.

Yeah but.

1675650121080.jpeg
 
I think this post is quite interesting having both companies reps provide a heck of a lot more information than we would find elsewhere.

Tjorben and Kegland have the right to chat with each other.

Tjorben deserves the benefit of the doubt regarding his slightly abrasive language as he's not a native English speaker.
I'm sure if I used mein bestes Deutsch with Tjorben he might scratch his head at my unintentional "tone" ;)

Regarding the Pill, I have 4 which I use regularly, 1 was DOA and Kegland are sorting out a replacement for me.

As an ex-web developer and IT nerd of 25 years my thoughts are:
  • The RAPT environment was in Beta when released
  • The portal and app are slowly improving but are still clunky
  • I am looking forward to Brewfather, Beartsmith, Brewtools, Grainfather etc integration
  • The customer service has been good
  • At the price point I cant complain too hard about things
  • It might be an idea to opensource the portal development (or a version of it) in order to allow the community to help
From a business perspective Kegland have no real motivation to invest in this toy other than the fact they love the home brew scene and think its cool.

So I'm thankful and happy to wait

:)
 
Hey Malchizedec. Thanks for the support. We really appreciate it.

Also for those who are interested in reading about Hygienic Design Principles they are specified in this document here:
EHEDG: Detail

This document above is made by the European Hygenic Engineering & Design Group so being an organisation in Europe I would imagine Tjorben would know of them. I should also say that these same design principles are what our own Australian certification company HACCP use. If you read the link in the above document you can see that it specifically says that "exposed threads" should be eliminated. So I am not sure how it could be any more explicit when it comes to hygienic design.
 
Once the unit is in the wort then if it is clean it won't infect, after fermentation you simply remove it from the fermenter and then clean it, this means removing the lid and cleaning as you would any brewing component. After cleaning then its good to go again same as an Ispindel is. After all cleaning brewing eqipment is very much part of the process of Brewing good beer. Ive used an Ispindel many times and cleaned it after use without any problems.
 
Hi members,

I have a Rapt pill and have been using regularly for just over 1 year now. While cleaning after the last three or four brews when I start to unscew the pill, there seems to be a gas build up inside as it nearly 'explodes' apart. It still works perfectly well and there is no moisture inside so it isn't leaking hence the pressure build up. Sorry if this has been raised before but is anyone else encountering this and would this idicate a dodgy battery? I am using it in the kegland allrounder pressure fermentor whether that would be a factor.

Appreciate any help, cheers
 
Hi members,

I have a Rapt pill and have been using regularly for just over 1 year now. While cleaning after the last three or four brews when I start to unscew the pill, there seems to be a gas build up inside as it nearly 'explodes' apart. It still works perfectly well and there is no moisture inside so it isn't leaking hence the pressure build up. Sorry if this has been raised before but is anyone else encountering this and would this idicate a dodgy battery? I am using it in the kegland allrounder pressure fermentor whether that would be a factor.

Appreciate any help, cheers

We use silicone o-rings with the pill hydrometer. Silicone o-rings are known to have high oxygen and co2 transmission rate. For this reason when the pill is under pressure for a long period gas will permeate into the pill housing over time. When you then get round to unscrewing the pill housing you can have gas inside for this reason.

The battery is a sealed unit and does not create gas (unless something is very wrong).
 
I think this post is quite interesting having both companies reps provide a heck of a lot more information than we would find elsewhere.

Tjorben and Kegland have the right to chat with each other.

Tjorben deserves the benefit of the doubt regarding his slightly abrasive language as he's not a native English speaker.
I'm sure if I used mein bestes Deutsch with Tjorben he might scratch his head at my unintentional "tone" ;)

Regarding the Pill, I have 4 which I use regularly, 1 was DOA and Kegland are sorting out a replacement for me.

As an ex-web developer and IT nerd of 25 years my thoughts are:
  • The RAPT environment was in Beta when released
  • The portal and app are slowly improving but are still clunky
  • I am looking forward to Brewfather, Beartsmith, Brewtools, Grainfather etc integration
  • The customer service has been good
  • At the price point I cant complain too hard about things
  • It might be an idea to opensource the portal development (or a version of it) in order to allow the community to help
From a business perspective Kegland have no real motivation to invest in this toy other than the fact they love the home brew scene and think its cool.

So I'm thankful and happy to wait

:)

Thanks for that Malchizedec. The Brewfather integration already exists and we also have public API so others can connect with other platforms if they like.

Furthermore since this thread we have has some meetings internally and we are going to also allow users to go into the pill and send data to their own endpoint so we will make this available for people who really do not want to connect to the internet or want to send data from the pill to another device for instance.

Integration with Beersmith and Brewtools is quite straight forward so we can do this but Grainfather is unlikely as they regard us as a threat.

We are not ready to do any opensource for our portal at this stage. We would prefer to keep this closed at least until several other devices are released. We are working more and more to connect devices together at the moment. For instance the RAPT Pill can be used as the temperature probe for the RAPT temp controller and the RAPT Chamber. In the future we will do similar things with the RAPT pressure regulator, and RAPT digital spunding valve for instance. This type of thing will allow for profiles that include spunding set pressures and carbonation set pressures. So we want to get ontop of this first before making any of the code open source.

If you feel that any parts of the platform are clunky can you please let us know which part in our gitlab:
Rapt.Io / Rapt.Io · GitLab
 
Srange problem with my pill which has been fine since I got it last year. I have 2 and this one is not as accurate as the other so i thought I would re-callibrate it..... basic callibration.

I connect it to a charger to enter AP mode. I can log into it ready to click calibrate but as soon as I disconnect the charger the lights go out and I only get an occational flash of the green led (mayne every minute or 2 or when its disturbed) . Reconnect the charger and it goes back into AP mode. Batthery was at 89% before I took it out of the pill.

I'm recieving telemetry from it as at the moment, just wont stay in AP when disconnected from the charger.....

Any ideas?
 
Thanks for that Malchizedec. The Brewfather integration already exists and we also have public API so others can connect with other platforms if they like.

Furthermore since this thread we have has some meetings internally and we are going to also allow users to go into the pill and send data to their own endpoint so we will make this available for people who really do not want to connect to the internet or want to send data from the pill to another device for instance.

Integration with Beersmith and Brewtools is quite straight forward so we can do this but Grainfather is unlikely as they regard us as a threat.

We are not ready to do any opensource for our portal at this stage. We would prefer to keep this closed at least until several other devices are released. We are working more and more to connect devices together at the moment. For instance the RAPT Pill can be used as the temperature probe for the RAPT temp controller and the RAPT Chamber. In the future we will do similar things with the RAPT pressure regulator, and RAPT digital spunding valve for instance. This type of thing will allow for profiles that include spunding set pressures and carbonation set pressures. So we want to get ontop of this first before making any of the code open source.

If you feel that any parts of the platform are clunky can you please let us know which part in our gitlab:
Rapt.Io / Rapt.Io · GitLab
This is my first post so howdy all!
The user changing endpoint thing is good news as I would dearly love to send data to my local server (on my LAN) and do my magic there. I also write Android apps and would love to integrate it to my app for brewing without using your public api. Although I do publish apps, I have chosen to not publish my brew app at this point. I wrote it to keep track of my wines (I have brewed around 20 batches in the last year, its a need to age before drinking thing). Actually a lot of my apps are written for my private use. Yes, I am a IT professional engineer by trade.
Totally understand about not taking your portal OpenSource.
Just for the record and the ongoing interesting discussion here:
I have ordered the Hydrom. I already have 2 pills, one seems to stay better calibrated then the other but both are usefully operational. I have been using them around a year. Very happy with them. About my only complaint is my old hands have trouble opening them up. But I like the smooth body design and double Oring. Ah to be a younger man again ;)
I got the Hydrom to do a comparison and for the comms capabilities for experimenting (yes its 100 bucks but hey, worthwhile. I have four fermenters so 3 hydrometers wont go to waste and I can post useful side by side data). I plan to put them both in the one brew as a true side by side test. Does anyone see any problems with having a pill and a hydrom in the one fermenter?
It has been an interesting read so far!
 
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