The inventor's journey: Why the Half Decent Scale is so unique
Before the Half Decent Scale became a feature-rich, Bluetooth-enabled espresso scale, it began as a DIY side project by a content creator named Soso. This video is his story—from hacking kitchen scales in his apartment, to building firmware, PCBs, and enclosures by hand, all in the spirit of open-source collaboration.
Chapters:
- 00:00 – Welcome & Introduction Soso opens the talk and outlines the two-part structure of his story.
- 00:47 – From Vlogger to Coffee Enthusiast How Soso's career as a Bilibili content creator led to a love of specialty coffee.
- 03:09 – Building the First DIY Scale Discovering scale components, open-source code, and building his first homemade scale.
- 07:54 – Inventing the Ratio Scale Introducing auto-calculation of coffee-to-water ratios—an early innovation.
- 10:54 – Automating Pour-Overs & Espresso How DIY tech let Soso control espresso machines and kettles using weight data.
- 17:03 – Hardware Hurdles & Iterations From melting plastic to bad PCB batches—Soso's path of trial, error, and prototyping.
- 27:05 – Joining Decent Espresso & Going Fully Open Source How Soso met John, shared his code, and helped launch the Half Decent Scale project.
- 39:00 – Apps, Community Mods & Beyond How the scale enables real-world use cases, from café workflows to cocktail recipes.
#scale #innovation #decon #decon2025
Updated 2025/06/28