Yomee - The World’s First Automatic Yogurt Maker

Final Touches on Yomee Prototype
over 7 years ago – Mon, Jan 21, 2019 at 11:33:44 PM

Dear Backers

Happy new year! We feel very good about 2019 coming out of a really busy and productive past 5 weeks. We're thankful to a team that laboured over Christmas and New Years, to keep product development on schedule. Read on for a breakdown of the past weeks.

Week 1 - Thermal Performance Improvement 

Much improved industrial design of the appliance, with chrome and black trimmings completed. More importantly we improved the thermal efficiency of the appliance, with an innovative heat sink. This also helped us reduce the size of the device by 45%. 

Week 2 - Added LED Color Rings 

With the new design, we also redesigned our PCBA (printed circuit board assembly) and added new LED color rings for users to understand to what Yomee is doing. While the Yomee smartphone app is a good accompaniment to your Yomee appliance, we don't want to make it look necessary. The LED color rings communicate every stage of the yogurt making with a one button operating. 

Week 3 - Automatic Temperature Adjustment 

We had another round of CNC prototype making and integrated the new PCBA. We've also added an intelligent algorithm to incubate the yogurt. This algorithm automatically adjusts the incubation temperature based on ambient settings to ensure you always get delicious yogurt in the shortest time.

Week 4 and 5 - Exhibiting at CES Las Vegas 

We were at Consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, we demonstrated our latest (re-designed) prototype and received very positive feedback. We were covered by the international press (BBC | Digital Journal | IEEE Spectrum). We won the Best of Kickstarter Award and the CES 2019 Innovation Awards at the show! 

Expected Shipping Timeline 

We thank you all again for your continued support and patience. While we have made lots of progress on the product re-design, we will need to push out the shipping dates to beyond Q1 2019. We are in active discussions with a contract manufacturer but we face logistical issues, including the Chinese New Year month (factories are closed until mid February). We will post the expected shipping timeline in next update.

Thanks,

The Yomee Team 

First Prototype Completed!
over 7 years ago – Wed, Dec 12, 2018 at 11:37:14 PM

Dear Backers,

A lot of things were done last month and significant progress made, please see below weekly breakdown.

Week 1 - Final Computer-Aided Design (CAD) 

We finished the first CAD based on the testing we did last month. See the below photo of the rough rendering:

Week 2 - First Prototype Completed 

The CAD from the last week was sent to prototyping facility. See below photo of high density 3D printed model ready for testing the heating, cooling and stirring system.

Magnetic Stirrer Testing 

Added colouring features conveying the heating, incubation and cooling progress

Week 3 - Printed Circuit Board Assembling (PCBA)

By mounting resistors and soldering various components, the PCBA process has been completed. A functional test was conducted to make sure all voltage, current and signal output are functioning within a predetermined range.

Week 4 - Integration Testing 

Integration testing has been performed to expose defects in the interaction between integrated components and systems.

Some of you asked for the detail timeline. We are preparing the final design for manufacturing package that will be sent out to the factory this week and then we will have more detail timeline. 

Thanks,

The Yomee Team

Ideal Temperatures Achieved
over 7 years ago – Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 12:41:17 AM

Dear Backers,

After testing several critical changes over the past month, we were able to make significant progress in various aspects of Yomee which are described as below.

Week 1 

As mentioned in the previous update, our founder Ashok reverted to the design idea from our earliest prototype of heating and cooling from the bottom. We are excited to announce that this has helped us reach our desired cooling temperature. We have tested the cooling performance with an array of cups with different thickness, dimensions, materials and insulations. Achieving ideal cooling for the yogurt at both the top and bottom of the cup is not easy, but we have managed to get the desired results.

Week 2

Our Engineering and Production team figured out that the desired heating results cannot be achieved only with the TEC, but only with a now patent-protected technology so we cannot reveal more at the moment but we are so excited to have reached the ideal heating efficiency finally.

We also have been testing with numerous fans and settled on a software-controlled fan (also patent-protected) which adjusts spinning speed automatically according to the temperature. This enables us to reduce noise significantly throughout the whole process as shown in the video below!

Week 3

Concerning the stirring process, we have been trying combinations of two, three and four magnets, in order to test stirring speed and ideal vertical and horizontal distances between two magnets. Our team concludes that it is best to use three magnets which help achieve stirring speed as fast as 30rpm (revolutions per minute).

Week 4

Two dispensing pockets are now designed for adding our Yomee culture pod and Yomee flavorings respectively. 

And finally, here are two photos of our test yogurt! Please feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] if you have any questions. Stay tuned for more updates!

Thanks,

The Yomee Team  

September Update
over 7 years ago – Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 02:57:56 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Manufacturing Process Updates
over 7 years ago – Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 01:39:32 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.