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Comment by svardilfari | Hacker News Reader

First thought: Cash grab

There's no way someone who designed, manufactured, tested and refined all this original equipment wouldn't include some technical photos, documents, experience or anything to 'sell' the product. And with pre-orders? There isn't even a single video of it making espresso without total cropping.

For reference - The owner lists his studies in media design and works for Terra Kaffe - claiming involvement in building Terra Kaffe TK-02

I'll happily change my opinion if anything resembling original invention is presented.

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If this were a cash grab, why in the world would a scammer post this to Show HN, instead of targeting a much larger, less savvy customer base via a crowdfunding platform?

Anything is possible, but I don’t know why you would jump to that conclusion without taking the opportunity to engage with the OP.

What do you mean by "cash grab"? Are you suggesting this is a scam?

I'd argue it looks like it, yes.

Giving me ZPM Espresso heeby geebies, but more money. Maybe inflation happens on scams too.

All the images look to be animation which is a warning sign for me.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zpmespresso/pid-control...

Yeah honestly I'm in the same boat here. Something seems very off about this. There's not a single video on the site or YT of the device working. The video on the site is intentionally cropped so we only see the portafilter. Why was that conscious decision made? The price also seems WAY out of line, as handmade machines like this go for many thousands of dollars. The builder also is completely anonymous, which seems odd for a passion project like this.

I spun up a little project a few years ago and designed a product based around analog synthesizers. It was something I really loved doing, and I dropped videos of the R&D process all the time. How could you not!? It's the best part of the process and it's great marketing too. Again, things just seem strange here. I hope I'm wrong. Someone in this thread seems to have bought one, so I suppose we'll see.

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