ZPM: The Kickstarter Failure That Revolutionised Espresso 

Just wanted to follow up on a few comments here. Firstly: did not expect this many Stargate references in the comments. Secondly: the PID. I want to add a couple of bits of detail. Firstly, I was put off from excess tinkering by the fact that any changes to settings didn’t save beyond switching the machine off. Secondly, I did mess around with them a bit (having done something me reading to try and get some guidance) and nothing I did had any real impact on performance. (Though, like I said, I don’t really know much about programming PIDs.)

I had no idea this existed. And something about the Construction Zone Orange stamped metal panels screwed together with the cheapest fasteners really really appeals to me

I'm so glad we now have a sound bite of James saying "back that ass up". Marvelous.

I've said this in other videos, but I'd like to reiterate that I appreciate seeing CC (not auto-generated) on your videos. It made a big difference to me (and likely those who rely on CC for their media consumption). Very interesting video, thank you.

James Hoffman saying “back that ass up” was something I had never expected to hear in my life and made me choke on my drink

08:19 - "Turing Compliant Espresso Machine" needs to be on a tee shirt.

"I had two buisinesses that were failing so i gave these two random dudes another million" Man i did something wrong in life.

"Back That Ass Up" Admittedly, was not on my James Hoffman Bingo Card

ZPM backer here. Sucked at the time, but no regrets. I appreciated the Decent coupon, and it's been a wild ride with my DE1+ v1.0. It just keeps getting better -- I'm making tasty espresso every day, and I just started making great filter coffee with it too.

James' little moment of wide-eyed Gollum-esque greed when he said "A patron asked if I wanted to buy it off him" had me choking on my lunch, I am increasingly convinced the man is a cartoon character brought to life.

As someone who works in videogames, the "back that @$$ up" prompt feels like something that, was, just for the prototypes 😂 sometimes it's the stupid little things that can keep you going during a repetitive testing phase.

I'm a control systems engineer with a specialty in building automation, but the concepts are very similar. Tuning the PID is somewhat straightforward, and I'll get into the basics later if anyone wishes to read. What I really wanted to point out was the fact that this system is not at all new and the sensors have likely drifted in accuracy over the years, especially if they were cheap sensors to begin with. We genearlly must certify accuracy of sensors annually to ensure a properly controlled loop. This machine, I'd guess, has never been recalibrated. As far as the PID tuning, some basic concepts first: Proportional gain should get you most of the way to the finish line - this is likely the largest gain of the 3. Proportional looks at how far you are away from the setpoint and applies force in the opposite direction to push you toward setpoint. The integral portion of the control loop looks at how far you are away from setpoint for how long (that extra time component is the key difference between P and I). It pushes a little bit if you're away from setpoint for a little bit of time and pushes ever harder the longer you stay away from setpoint. Derivative looks at how fast the control variable is moving toward or away from setpoint and attempts to limit that rate of change. It's like a cop telling the loop to slow down because it's heading toward the setpoint too quickly. Adding derivative allows a rapid response to a step change while limiting the overshoot. To begin tuning, zero out the other gains and focus on tuning the P first. There is some P gain value above which the loop goes unstable - stay well below that point. Too high proportional gain and you get uncontrollable osscillations. Too low proportional gain and there is slow reaction to stimulus. Properly tuned proportional-only control will result in a steady state offset error. This is expected and fine. So...move on to the second part of tuning: Integral. If you have a steady state offset from the proportional, you fix that with a little bit of integral. But much like adding spice to a dish, there is definitely a point where you've added too much. Too much integral results in steady state osscilation (imagine integral says "TOO LOW - INCREASE TEMPERATURE" immediately followed by "TOO HIGH - DECREASE TEMPERATURE" and just repeats that over and over and over. So, in the software I used, it was typical to do something like I=P/20. Derivative is the last thing to tune in, but in my line of work, derivative gain was always set to zero because it only works well if you have a very direct, accurate, and fast feedback of where you are at any point in time or space. Our systems always had a time constant that was a tad too long to effectively use D gain, so we didn't. Of course, there's math you can do to theoretically calculate the gains, and most literature says those of us who tune by feel are dumb and should at least feel bad for doing so. But I find the math depends highly on the application. If there's liklihood of dangerous results, do not do this by hand because things can go wrong very quickly. I always had multiple layers of software and mechanical safeties in place so if the loop were to go unstable, nothing catastrophic would occur. That's my way of saying be careful and by all means, research the math behind it if you're so inclined.

Anyone familiar with Stargate knows that they always had problems with a lack of functional or fully charged ZPMs. An ominous sign, I would say!

As a programmer, I can confirm there's loads of immaturity in closed betas. It's never meant to be seen by the public so we frequently add in our own thoughts and humor.

What's really mind-blowing though is the idea that people STILL, in 2022, seem to think Kickstarter is a shopping website and not a crowdfunding website.

ZPM Backer here. I really appreciate the video review - indeed, this is really the first time in a decade I have seen the unit in operation. Who knows where it might have gone with a bit more funding, but I feel that this video and the eventual success of the DE1 gives me some closure. So thank you for doing this.

I think this really puts emphasis on Breville/Sage Bambino machines and how they can build and ship such a budget machine that works really well.

I remember this very well. I almost backed this device. in the end, I decided against it... I did, however, follow the entire case study from start to finish... a very sad finish indeed... Very shortly after this product failed, everyone was reminded that Kickstarter was NOT a store, and you weren't purchasing a product, you were backing an idea, sending them money to fulfil that idea, and likely getting one of the product devices, if that idea came to be a good one... Kickstarter was never a web store, and most people forgot that point...

Interesting to see how a failed 400€ machine "kickstarted" the development of a 5000€ machine.

Omg I have never wanted a coffee machine to tell me to “back that ass up” but now I want that feature

Plot twist: the patreon supporter who wins the machine is the patreon supporter that sold him the machine.

I was hoping that talk about using cheap components in the Decent machine would lead to a low (at least sub $1k) price point, but lo and behold, the machine cost $3.5k. I guess I'll have to keep dreaming...

As a software engineer, I can assure you 'back that ass up' is entirely tame compared to what you might find in some other pre-release software when copy hasn't been supplied yet.

Just a warning as a long term user of surfshark. They charge a random amount of money the second bill and there is no cancel button. You have to ask and argue why you want to cancel.

Great little stroll down memory lane! I was a backer myself, and one of the things that appealed to me about the ZPM was that the low price point felt like a low barrier of entry: not just cost wise, but also like, in terms of not having to buy in completely to becoming a Weird Espresso Person in order to play around a bit with it at home. Needless to say, the Decent did not give me that same feeling, so I wound up leaving my coupon unused. Fortunately, that same year, the Kickstarter gods delivered me a success in the Uniterra Nomad, recently featured in James’s absurd day around London. And that little device has been a joy to fiddle with ever since - to this day I still whip it out to make the occasional espresso when I feel like enjoying one from the comfort of my own home rather than at a cafe. In a way, I wonder if the ZPM didn’t also revolutionize espresso in a different direction by demonstrating that there was a strong market for the sub-$300 espresso toy, which arguably led to the explosion of manual espresso makers now widely available.

Honestly I think the popularity of the Flair's and modded Gagia's is still a testament that there's still a place in the market for something like the ZPM. Something with zero frills and maybe requires some elbow grease and might be finnicky, but will have the excellent cost to quality espresso ratio.

With this many ZPMs being made, if this had been successful Stargate Atlantis would have gone very differently!

I'm quite amazed that the ZPM allows the user to fiddle with the parameters of the PID controller(s). PIDs are very simple to write (about 30 lines of code, even with diagnostic logging) but take an enormous amount of skill, knowledge, time/multiple iterations to tune via the parameters. PID parameters really aren't something that users will be capable of successfully choosing - this suggests that perhaps the ZPM founders weren't able to step outside their own technologist/engineer way of thinking shoes into the shoes of a more regular user.

I was never the angry backer, but I really was looking forward to it. Another 10 years went by before getting my hands on an espresso machine and ultimately finding James' channel.

This is a fascinating discussion. I'm not even a coffee dork but this is a great discussion on what it takes to build a hardware project. Thank you for putting it together and sharing it. I really, really appreciate John's candor in discussing his experience. It's relevant to my life right now and there are some really great nuggets in the story. Cheers to both of you.

I've never think a Zero Point Module would brew espresso, but hey, learn something new every day :P Great video! I think it's great to dive into products that non-traditional product makers have created and the shortfalls that they've run into. I think this further pushes the notion that great coffee/espresso does take quite a bit of thought and design and possibly, high quality components (that add to the higher cost due to their necessity).

I honestly thought, having known nothing about this machine apart from what I saw in this video, that this machine would have been better served in a coffee museum. I think going to one of the patreon backers is fine, but I'd personally rather it go to a coffee museum, because it seems that it was a large milestone in terms of coffee tech when it comes to what not to do? Like the road to achieving something that works wonderfully is essentially all the bits before that failed miserably right?

It is such a pleasure seeing the quality of your intros (and of course the quality of the whole video) improving from video to video.

ZPM provides you and a whole stargate with power for the day. As an engineer with a knack for pid, i really like the design and the idea behind it. Customizable settings for everyone, toolless changing of pump pressure etc Having modified quite a few espresso machines (and built a few frankenstein versions with stainless steel thermo blocks on group heads that had corroded aluminum boilers) the results can be quite amazing. But its difficult to change products in ways, that keep most prototype features, can be built en mass, are easy to use and service, have durable precision - all for an affordable price. But considering the ridiculous price of a 4000€ "decent" - i would prefer to have the ZPM and modify/tune it with a community, like 3D printers. So, im staying with my sage "ESP32" and wish whoever uses the ZPM lots of fun

The Ancients really seem to leave their equipment unfinished. This espresso machine didn't even include the zero point module they put in the name.

I like the edgy - no pun intended - design. Looks more like a tool than a household appliance.

I’m curious what barriers the safety certification present that they meant they couldn’t deliver. Was it bureaucratic, fundamental flaws to the design or something else?

I was a backer of this. As an engineer I was disappointed the kickstarted failed to deliver. From what you showed it tells me that they did not put enough effort into making the output match reality, and that should be the simple thing to deliver in a product. How you tweak that output to make espresso is a what I wanted to play with at that time. Thank you for the review of the machine. This also explains why you do not get involved with reviewing preshipping Kickstarter projects

Thank you James for putting together history of coffee in your videos making it available to public. This is quite beautifully put and I learned a lot. As always James thank you so much for your videos and hope you have a great day!

I used to repair espresso machines for a living. It’s fascinating to follow the thought processes up against technology AND the gustatory component of how to make a good shot of light roasted espresso. I think the Italians had it already figured out a century ago. Good luck improving on it.

In regards to the immature 'back that ass up' menu... keep in mind this wasn't a shipping product. This was an internal R&D vehicle and the lads were keeping themselves amused while they worked. That wouldn't have been part of a shipping product.

ZPM is an acronym from STARGATE: ATLANTIS. It is an alien power unit.

This video makes me wonder if the failed Perk Coffee maker on Kickstarter was caught up in safety red tape. I've since forgotten what reason they gave but I know they had working prototypes and it seemed like it was going to be successful until it wasn't. It is interesting that the ZPM inspired the Decent and pretty cool to know the backstory.

I‘m a control system engineer. Letting the operator alter the PID parameters is just a really really bad idea.

Not only the content is great, now the video editing is top notch.

I just LOVE the design and the colour!

Patreon!? *That belongs in a museum!*

The history of invention is full of stories like this. Very rarely if ever does a person just think up a wholly orignal idea, create it and then ship it. There's always iterations and evolutions. Somebody else coming in with their own perspective and filling in some gap that was missing before. Overall this was a pretty cool story. A little sad that first duo didn't get to fulfill their idea completely but their influence has been felt.

The engineer mentioned the failure of the "on-demand" water heating, seems like a key point. Not having a hot/pressurized tank makes a huge difference to cost. If the pump is going directly to the thermoblock, minimal "hot" piping is needed since you are basically heating the water right before it enters the basket. But it seems like you would need to have some amount of thermal isolation between the thermoblock and the temperature transducer to get an accurate reading, and enough power and thermal mass in the block to keep it under control. Would love to see under the hood

PID is a pain to use, but if it can reach optimal temp and pressure for any amount of time then it's absolutely a settings issue. However, expecting the user to time the PID is unreasonable, especially since it could take several hundred tests to tune it perfectly.

The "back that ass up" portion of the video had me laughing out loud for a solid 30s. What a marvelous piece of RU-vid history that was watching James discuss it

I was one of the original backers and really liked what they thought they could do. As an engineer it made a lot of sense (I mean, it worked for modern architecture). I thought the Decent coupon was an insult since it was basically an invitation to spend multiple times what I had already spent to get a machine I had zero knowledge of or investment in that also hadn't been developed yet. I'm really happy with my current E61 machine from Rocket though. (Side note: I have never received anything I've crowdfunded, so I'm completely out of that game now. If you want to build a product, build the product and maybe I'll buy it.)

As a computer scientist, "Turing-compliant espresso machine" is just... absurd! Using jargons like this does not make it "scientific".

I remember this! It sounded really great when the Kickstarter was announced

Correct. "Back that thing up", dates and regionalizes a thing. It's cute for the moment but goes stale quickly and needlessly.

As a systems engineer, the completely transparent PID gains are hilarious to me. Tuning a control system is an entire field of study, and while you can kind of fiddle with numbers to get things right, it is absolutely not user-facing information.

As a control engineer I think: - PID is not a good control technique for what variables you're trying to control in espresso, it's just easy to implement which is why it's so widespread - The mismatch in temp and pressure are very likely tuning ime, but equally poor sensing pressure and temperature could be to blame

I was a backer. I’m still using my 2010 Rancilio Silvia with PID. Looks like we all dodged a bullet here. Happy to have some closure on the issue.

Really cool hearing the interview, cant wait for the video on the Decent!

Fascinating interview with John! Thanks for sharing. Really interesting to see the setup for the DE1 More and more excited to have the Decent as my end goal coffee machine

I love this video! It is amazing to see the behind the scenes.

Ok... my espresso universe just opened up... Thank you James for this episode and for sharing these 5:30 mins of John Buckman. This is pure gold.

I was also a backer. I had no idea about the coupon. I need to check my e-mail more regularly. I'm glad I missed it because over $3,000 for the Decent machine was way beyond my budget at the time. Now I just own a lever machine.

Great retrospective on the ZPM Kickstarter of a nifty espresso maker. I was a backer, even if I’m not an espresso drinker, but because I’m a heat transfer nerd and wanted to play with their machine. I’m not much of a controls engineer, but with James’ data logger, the PID settings could be tuned to improve the performance. He has the right tools, and it would be a shame to miss that opportunity before it’s given to a backer who may not have the same capability.

James. You bring so much joy to my life.

John is a class act -- he really didn't HAVE to give ZPM anything, and while it would have been scummy, he could have just blamed ZPM for showing him everything before they had reached a deal. Instead, he essentially took a portion of the price of that failure on his own back just because it was the right thing to do.

I remember seeing the original video. The promise was GS3 quality for $200. Nice to see this topic being covered, way to go!

You are truly enjoyable to watch and provide great information. Thank you!

Fascinating, I think its really easy to fall in love with PID controls when you first learn them because they are so simple and powerful but they definitely have their limitations. Any system that is very sensitive to small changes in input but that take a relatively long time to manifest will struggle with PID and I can see how heating on demand would fit that scenario. Rocket science has the same challenge with thrust vector controls for the rocket engine, they have to incorporate predictive modeling into their controls to make it work.

My man James with this absolutely amazing content and all I can focus on is the missing screw on the front of the machine.

Love the video, but commenting specifically about PIDs ARGHHHHHH! I'm an industrial engineer and my career has been plagued by PIDs. Not because I don't understand them, but because NO-ONE understands them. The final proof of this cam for me when I was visiting the engineering department at the HQ of on of the largest companies in the world that make PID devices. I asked their engineers how to set one up. Best answer I got was "Play about with it, until it behaves how you need. Then write the settings down in permanent ink. Preferably in the form of a tattoo". I actually started work on a replacement program methodology, but like so many other projects of mine, it fell by the wayside when other, more immediately profitable, projects came along. So, you are not on your own with PIDs, even the engineers who make them don;t understand them.

I'm amazed that James is practically the only other RU-vidr, besides Tom Scott, to advertise a VPN and not spew a load of BS provided by the advertiser. No "hide your web browsing from hackers" or anything, just plain and simple. Love it.

Wow so interesting to see this all these years later. I was very close to backing this, but my gut was telling me that the creators couldn't meet their claims. I was hoping to be wrong, I was excited by the idea of the machine, and would have been first in line to get one once it was available. I think your analysis of what happened was spot on. They were naive and simply had no clue as to what it takes to take a product from concept to volume production (like so many other crowd-funded projects)

A Zero Point Module? That must make many espressos...

There’s been some class content on this channel just recently and I am absolutely here for it!!!

So much quality in those videos...damn

Dear James, I want to thank you for all your almost "obsessive" efforts into the world of quality coffee and sharing them with us all. Having experimented with various espresso machines, and having worked with some pro systems, I was almost breathless watching a fellow coffee enthusiast show me their DE1, this was not an espresso machine so much as it is a piece of scientific equipment and the DE1 represented a complete change in the more "artistry" driven machines that have existed in the past, where the user had to come to know the machine intimately ( assets and more importantly faults ) and to juggle those qualities to create a quality result, and perhaps us the reason why there is such a reaction to the manner in which this machine presents itself. In all honesty if I was not a poor starving artist, I would purchase the DE1 in a heartbeat. So I appreciated very much your presentation of the ZPM as a part of the DE1 past that I had no knowledge of.

Meanwhile I'm here using my Flair for 4-5 years, controlling temperature with thermometer and a stove, and pressure with my arms. And feeling really happy about it. There is extremely little that can go wrong with it.

This is cool to see. I met with them to write a story for a magazine years after seeing them speak about the initial Kickstarter - right before they folded. The story goes they never thought they’d get enough kickstarters to have to manufacture overseas. One of them was just going to hand build every machine - they thought they’d be making 50 of these things if they were lucky.

I'd love to work for this guy. He has incredible insight, learned from mistakes. No ego.

I remember seeing one of the "Keurig " machines in the early 90s targeting truck drivers. No one thought people would spend that much money on tiny cups. Lol

Yup, that's how beta testing works. As a computer science student, my professor told me that it was common to put inside jokes and references on R&D programs since it's understood that those things aren't leaving the office/lab.

Nothing makes my week looks a James Hoffman video 🥺🥰

I'm a backer, for $200 I wasn't expecting anything extravagant, just something that made better coffee than pod machines, and it seemed the Nocturne was capable of that.

Very interesting video! John mentions Bill Crossland and his CC1 machine -- I actually bought my first espresso machine as a secondhand CC1 v2! Very cool to see it mentioned here.

The Crossland CC1 is my entry into the home machine. Not perfect, but a great entry into the hobby.

Great video, awesome work tying this all together.

James drops a new video, I immediately hit the like button to get that out of the way and then enjoy another amazing video. Thanks to James, I’ve spent thousands of coffee stuff and don’t regret a penny of it. Learned more from playing around with all the new gadgets and such and couldn’t get that kind of fun for that price in any of my other hobbies. Also just drove from VA to NJ yesterday and got through a good chunk of his audiobook. Only James could keep me interested in listening about coffee.

I remember reading a scientific study on making espresso. Do you think the Decent had anything to do with it? In general, the science of coffee is amazing!

I didn’t know this existed but I did back a carbon fiber rc plane that took 7 years to get to me. It was ultimately trash and I still haven’t received the extra perks I paid for so I stopped backing projects

Thanks James yet again another brilliant video!

The reasoning behind product development is so interesting! I'm not part of the corporate world in any way, but it tickled my mind in the right way. As always well done Mr Hoffmann and team. And thanks for your lovely ways. You are a gorgeous man!

The fact that this machine was priced so low instantly makes me think that the sensors are just low quality and not precise enough, which means any amount of software is not going to help if the data you’re getting isn’t reliable in the first place.

It's kind of interesting from engineering point of view but at the same time feels completely miserable for the end user. In theory you could tune any given set of low cost but competent enough components with PID controller. But without a good point to start from, you are totally on your own and with so many different components working together during brewing process it's very difficult to model and control the whole system. Additionally, you have to take into account that components wear out over time so you would be constantly tweaking and tuning the controller with changes to PID settings. Since these components are cheaper, they would most likely have much wider tolerances in manufacturing process so there would never be a golden set of parameters that other users could simply copy and just get their espresso to the point where it is "good enough". So basically, we wouldn't be able to watch similar tutorials like for pour over techniques or discussions about inverting (or not) Aeropresses. Instead of just enjoying your cup of coffee, you would be constantly tweaking and tuning PID based on a gut feeling really because the measured values are also way off so you never know what to trust to make a decision about next change to the parameters. I feel that if I did that, my next brewer would be the Bribe to carry me through a mental breakdown in wilderness, far from all things electronic.

basic PID question.. how do machines maintain brew temp through shot? as cold water needs to be heated while brewing. my Lelit has stable temp before brewing... and then drops during the shot.. please explain the process.

That interview was amazing. I want more of that story.

This was a great video but not the only time that the coffee community has been conned out of hard earned money. In 2015 we were promised a next generation espresso machine with the ability to replace the full barista experience called Arist. This kickstarter project stole over $845,000 dollars from about 2500 backers. To this day people still comment asking for a refund with no idea of what happened. Please do a special about the Arist so we can shed some light on this mystery.

I love James Hofmann so much! Every time he uploads, he makes my day 1 million times better! Keep up the good work james :)

Oh the pain you've just brought back, James! Not only the ZPM but also not cashing in that coupon with Decent while the price was still around the 1000$ mark. I did walk away with an Encore grinder which is still my daily driver, so there is some solace.

Fascinating back story on how the Decent came to be. Great video James