Bobby Bobak, creator of coffee app Filtru

Bobby created Filtru. A coffee app for iOS that helps you brew the perfect cup. Bobby sheds some light into what it takes to create an amazing cup of coffee. Along the way we touch upon Bluetooth smart scales and integration with those.

Learn more about Filtru: https://filtru.coffee/
Follow Bobby on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bobek_balinek

The smart scales we talked about are called Acaia, more info here: https://acaia.co/

If you want to have Testflight access to Filtru: https://testflight.apple.com/join/64ycttB8

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Transcript

Jeroen Leenarts: 0:47

Hi, and welcome to another special edition of my podcast. I'm sitting here with Bobby. He does something with coffee apps. And he's into a bit of hardware hacking as well. And yeah, there's a lot of stuff that we want to go over. So, Bobby, Hi, how are you doing today?

Bobby Bobak: 1:05

Hey, all right. Thank you for having me.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:07

So, your last name, can you tell us what your last name is? Babak? Baba. Okay, so Bobby, Baalbek, but people call your bobby because your first name is an interesting name, right?

Bobby Bobak: 1:19

It's Seamus one. And it's quite difficult to pronounce for if you're not from Eastern Europe, I guess.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:27

Okay, so but you're not living in Eastern Europe right now, right.

Bobby Bobak: 1:31

Now. So I'm originally from Poland. And I've been, I'm currently in Manchester, England. And I lived here 15 years now.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:45

Because I could tell when I first started talking to you that your accent is, is pretty spotless for somebody from the UK. And well, that's, I think it's a compliment. You can hear that your flight from the I think Manchester area. So that's always a bit fun to hear in somebody. Well, the way that they speak English. I have a distinct Dutch accent, I think. But that's okay, as well. But coffee and hardware hacking? How did that happen? Just let's get started.

Bobby Bobak: 2:19

Yeah, sure. So I'll start with coffee, really. When I was at University of, I just couldn't really find a decent place to do my work. So I'm originally my background is in design, and digital design. So stuff like you know, logos, animations, 3d modeling, mobile apps, and my course was predominantly project base. So we can have a six week project rotor. And I would just struggle to find a place to where I can sit down and do some work. So a friend of mine took me to a local specialty coffee, coffee coffee shop. And yeah, that was that was a good vibe, you know, so in among other developers and kind of, you know, seeing what they work on, and obviously me doing my work and kind of getting to know people from from the local iOS, Ruby community as well. Yes, kind of, while I was working in those, you know, do my work in coffee shops, I kind of been seeing what the barista is doing, you know, chatting to them about their process and it kind of really inspired me into learn more about coffee and what's kind of what's the best way to prepare it. And then, kind of baristas gave me a few notes on how I can actually improve the coffee at home, you know, what kind of equipment Gee do I need and so forth. And it was all quite, quite difficult to put together because, you know, involves like, folding a paper filter and then doing a grind in that specific granule granularity. The coffee beans are kind of fine enough not to find so the water can drip through it. And this all this kind of process was quite difficult. And, and then there wasn't really any. Well, there was there was sort of pre recipes from various baristas and Coffee Roasters. And then kind of fast forward maybe to 2016 which was after I finished university and kind of got onto a development job. I bought an Apple Watch. And that gave me an idea. You know, what if there was a kind of a little helper on your wrist to teach you with this way of making coffee where it kind of taps you on the wrist when you supposed to pour water in onto coffee. And when you suppose to kind of stop or when you suppose when you need to stir the coffee's as well. So all this kind of sounds a bit difficult. If it's done right, the coffee does turn out amazing. If you've got the right coarseness of coffee, or the right temperature and all these things together, make a really, really good tasting cup of coffee. So far, you know, I learn iOS development, it'd be a perfect chance to kind of dabble with, with, with Apple Watch with, with, with Swift as well. And the end, the prototype worked, you know, it was it was a small, simple timer. It was quite a pretty quickly I've realized how difficult it is to, to make a watch up. I guess there's, at the time, a lot of iOS developers had similar struggles, you know, with with built in UI and kind of making the making sure the app actually runs on the device. And debugging. That was, that was a journey. And

Jeroen Leenarts: 6:32

that was hell. Yeah,

Bobby Bobak: 6:34

pretty sure, yeah. But when I took this prototype to my kind of friend, barista friends, and, and pretty quickly, we kind of, we've realized, you know, sure, it's a cold prototype, but there actually is something useful in this maybe not as an watch up, because, you know, not everybody will have a watch. But there is a something too, like a step by step instruction set for someone not familiar with brewing, coffee brewing, and how can I how they can actually know follow a recipe, and have the app to kind of in real time helped him along the way, whether it's through you know, instructions, or just showing the timer and pinging with an audible sound, when they were supposed to stop or, you know, stare and so forth. You know, so I kind of carried on with it. And the app was, to my surprise, pretty well received, you know, is it's, it's grown pretty well. And I made it free to start with, which is, you know, a good way to build an audience. And the, the flood of feature requests came in, one of them was to support coffee scale. And there's, there's been quite a few coffee scales to do use a Bluetooth of like a Bluetooth Low Energy chip, to let apps communicate and read the values or even controlling control the device. And at the time, the very popular one was a Kaia, which is a kind of California based, I always describe it as the apple of coffee scales, because they have pinned down to, it says amazing quality device, it's you know, it's, it's flawless. It costs a bomb, and it's made out of acrylic plastic, but it's just beautiful to look at. And it's pretty much every cafe, specialty coffee shop, you go to, they're everywhere, because they're very robust devices. Probably with that is the, the creators of it do have a bit of apple mentality where it's end to end control of the of the hardware, and software. So those are the those skills didn't really have an SDK. And they've done a really good job of kind of clamping down ability to connect with it. Which kind of led me to, well, to start with, I thought, I'll have a go at doing so. It was it was quite difficult to kind of try and figure out which what kind of Bluetooth characteristics and service IDs a Brook broadcasts certain data at, and kind of trying to reverse engineer. So kind of gave gave up on it. And just he started emailing other manufacturers of coffee scales, if they have, you know, some sort of SDK. And if you know, if I can't have the perfect akkaya scale in my app, or at least I can have some sort of support for, you know, smaller, cheaper devices. Yeah, and that's kind of I've kind of managed to build an audience of, of coffee. Brewers with they do have other devices. Yeah,

Jeroen Leenarts: 10:16

so that's, that's quite a lot to unpack. He just told tear off the last few minutes. Really? Yeah, sorry. Okay, because now we can like start picking it apart and then just go more in depth on on different areas on on what you just told the year that you mentioned, that was 2016. So yeah, that's the year that you graduated or the year that you started looking for a job.

Bobby Bobak: 10:43

I know. So I've graduate In 2011 20, oh, I'm sorry, 2014 2015.

Jeroen Leenarts: 10:50

So what did you do between 2013 and 2016?

Bobby Bobak: 10:55

I've been working as a web developer.

Jeroen Leenarts: 10:58

So you graduated in 2013. And you were doing some web development. And through these sort of sounds like meetup like activities in a coffee shop, you got to know, other developers. And in some way, you, you sort of rolled into iOS development. So So what happened there? How did you get from a web developer? Because you mentioned Ruby? That's probably one of the languages that you did a lot of work with. Yeah. How did you like jump ship from Ruby? Because I know Ruby is they're quite enthusiastic about what they're doing into iOS development.

Bobby Bobak: 11:36

Yeah. So yeah, rupees are very, in love with the language. I don't know, I know it for the university, there was kind of been almost always this kind of push for it iPad apps and iPhone apps. And I've always kind of wanted to do so. I just found Objective C, to be really difficult to learn data. And also, I think, maybe it's my language barrier. I just really didn't know how to look for the right resources. I guess that would explain it. Yeah, so kind of, I just parked the idea of learning iOS apps. So it was because I just couldn't really get into get into it. I've been building web applications and did a lot of PhoneGap, which was, you know, embedding HTML JavaScript into, into a shell of an app and actually let you ship it as an actual mobile app. It's still a fake up. Really, it's just a website. Yeah, I mean, you know, it did help me kind of develop, like a design aesthetic. And, no, there's been a lot of projects at University where I had to do design, actually, I have a mobile application. And I tried kind of to do with, with like, a prototype, using PhoneGap, as well. And yeah, it was until 2015 2016, where I just kind of just, I was like, I've had enough I need to learn a because there's been a lot of, you know, a lot of kind of podcasts, like occidental Tech Tech podcast, where it really was inspiring for me to actually get into iOS development that kind of, as I saw, being an indie developer as a as a cool thing. Yeah, so I just picked up. I think it was a Stanford iOS development course, which was at the time on the iTunes you University thing. That's, yeah, that was that was cool. I was I was really helpful. And so probably the best.

Jeroen Leenarts: 14:18

So you graduated in 2013? And where did you Where did you do your education?

Bobby Bobak: 14:27

And here in Manchester, so I went to Salford University.

Jeroen Leenarts: 14:32

So you so you move to the UK for your education? Or what's the what's the process? Because you're not? So what's Yeah,

Bobby Bobak: 14:41

sure. Well, who wouldn't go a real way back?

Jeroen Leenarts: 14:46

Yeah, wait, wait till I start asking you about your first computer.

Bobby Bobak: 14:53

And so I moved to UK in 22,006 2006. Yeah. And it was eras. As my my parents really wanted to move UK we know for job prospects, it was 2006 till 2008 really was quite a rough time. It was it was it was a time where no a lot of Polish people would emigrate out elsewhere, looking for better job opportunities. And you know, we kind of decided UK to give it give a go and actually, you know, let us have a good have having an education there as well. So I kind of finished my high school in Poland, and then started high school again in England. because my my grades and kind of the level of education in Poland wasn't really recognized because of my lack of English. So I had to kind of redo a year, year and a half really. Which was a funny story to be fair, you know, a finished, finished high school, you know, pretty decent grades, especially at maths. And it was, it was an art, art school as well. So they do a bit of a fair bit of like sculpturing and oil painting and so forth. To be thrown into a they gave me I started school in January, and then February, March, they were already doing kind of like essays. And they literally left they put me at the last year of this high school, where are you supposed to finish all the GCSE? As you know, they have grades finalized. And they just, they were like, right, we know your English is not great, but at least have a go. So I've been basically doing the same and year twice, just to get in a good grade. So I can go to, to kind of an A level slash like a college. Education. Yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 17:07

So what was the hardest part of being like uprooted from Poland and then being like, thrown into the English lifestyle?

Bobby Bobak: 17:19

And it's the language barrier, I have to say it's like a, I don't know how to describe it. I think it's like a psychological blocker. Because you don't really know the language, you're constantly worried. Because you're, you're kind of on somebody else's turf. Right. And, you know, you, you fear that if you say something wrong in their language, it's disrespectful, and they might look for like, frown upon you. And that was a, you know, that was that was that was quite tough, I have to say, especially at school, you know, it's when it's been like likable, and having cliques. And being you know, being with within your circle of friends is pretty much everything to a teenager. And yeah, that was that was done. That was the hardest part.

Jeroen Leenarts: 18:13

So and in that one and a half year that you were in the, in this transitional periods of probably also learning a lot about the English language. So what are some of the things that you did to, to get through the day and the weeks to, to actually get your grades and prepare yourself for university?

Bobby Bobak: 18:36

Am? i Good question. I just, I mean, ever since I was in Poland, I was just kind of trying to learn to code. And, you know, Father for quite creative family. No, my father was a graphic designer, like a traditional graphic designer, print, print based. You know, I went to an art school where we did a load of painting and sketching and kind of it was all about this kind of designers thinking, Bible's also kind of was drawn to this other side of the brain, the analytical part. And, you know, I was always fascinated about the computer we had at home. And I've been kind of playing with, with like, 3d animations. Very simple, because the computer was very slow. And I did learn bits of HTML and PHP. So when I moved to Poland, I just kind of as when I moved to UK, sorry. I, I just kind of immersed in the evenings, I was just doing my homework and then, you know, hockey, non PHP apps and kind of build in like a web based game. It was like a economix. It's like an MMO game. But as a as a set of forums. It was like an MMO RPG. I don't know if you ever heard of our game?

Jeroen Leenarts: 20:21

No, not not specifically, but I am aware of text based adventure games like

Bobby Bobak: 20:28

it's a bit yeah, it's similar. It's more of like a strategy where you've got you kind of click buttons to build mines and build your fleet and attack other players. So it's kind of started as a as a side side project really in Poland. And then when I moved to UK, I was kind of just carrying on with trying to make, make it a thing, which I've kept constantly, you know, hitting brick walls of like simple math problems, right? How do I calculate, you know, based on the level you've, you've kind of subscribed to? How do you actually mind resources and give user enough, you know, float values for his, you know, his statistics.

Jeroen Leenarts: 21:21

And so, what I noticed in your entire backstory right now is that there was always something creative going on, you mentioned that you did like oil painting and other creative outlets during your education in Poland. Yeah, does a lot of that experience and what's been taught on that level in Poland, carry over to the education that you did in, in the UK? In Manchester.

Bobby Bobak: 21:52

Yeah, I mean, that was kind of always does. Like a driving force is of I thought, I've always wanted to be a graphic designer. And never, ever would have imagined that I'm going to be, you know, a developer. That said, I've always kind of been dabbling with, you know, simple coding, and that I used to kind of make simple click and point games with like, an app called theme factory. So he's always kind of this symbiotics of, you know, trying to apply some creative thinking and designing bits and bobs, and then trying to actually build it and learn to code to actually be able to, you know, apply the design into an actual functional thing. And, yeah,

Jeroen Leenarts: 22:47

so and you mentioned that the coffee brewing app feel true that you created that based on your experience with discovering brewing coffee yourself, and also that you needed some sort of, like, projects, side projects to really gain some experience going in, in I think it was still Objective C or was already Swift.

Bobby Bobak: 23:15

Oh, Swift already? Yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 23:16

Okay. So and so did you do all of the design work on filtro? yourself? Or?

Bobby Bobak: 23:24

Yeah, yeah, it was. Quite a process. Yeah, I've, I've always wanted to do both really. You know, it's one thing looking at, like Pinterest, and dribble to look for inspiration. And the other is actually, you know, whipping out a sketch pad and doodling an actual iconography on user interface. I guess that's how my brain is wired. You know, if I, if I don't put something on paper, I don't really quite understand it done. I can't really see it through.

Jeroen Leenarts: 23:59

Yeah, so it's a lot of you make a lot of paper prototypes for your product.

Bobby Bobak: 24:06

Yeah, I would say so. Yeah, I don't know as, as kind of, I've seen a lot of types of paper prototypes, I think mine are just simple wireframes. And there was a, there was a, there's quite a process that we've been taught at university, which is to kind of build a brainstorm or a word cloud of ideas around what problem you're trying to solve. And then start with like a schematics where you just build a general structure by it's like a simple graph, where you know, how a user might want to solve, an I don't know, create, like using an actual user button, and then go to like an added screen, and you kind of sketch out the outer layer of the app. And then wireframes is where, you know, I would actually put this is how I lay things out and how the user might actually see that on the on the screen.

Jeroen Leenarts: 25:08

Yeah, cuz that's what you're describing there is the the flow of screen to screen so how things are attached to each other. So how you can actually accomplish a task. But what I'm really curious about is that if you compare freeform drawing, so just draw whatever you like, or something creative and you compare that to converting a wireframe of an app into an actual design, in what way so those two activities similar or different

Bobby Bobak: 25:44

you know, It's a really, really good question. Trying to think of how I can answer it. So with free forum, sketching, I guess, I've always been kind of taught to just put something down, draw, you know, if it's a, you know, if you're sketching a person, just get a rough kind of roof curvature of the shape of a human and then start and then from that, trying to carry that forward and build the details where it matters. So you know, you would build like, you would start with just a oval shape of the face, and then you know, then you would build the kind of bond structure and, you know, the nose and the eyes. So you would start from, you know, an outer layer and going in depth with that, and I think we've, we've converted in my wireframes into an app, it's very similar process, you know, just kind of build, drop in general buttons, and make sure they're actually at least they're laid in the correct way. And then I'll put down device and tester. And it's, I think, the advantage of building, you know, digital interfaces, you know, you get to try it as soon as you write some code with it. And especially with Interface Builder at the time, just Swifty wise, now is amazing, is the best thing that happened, really. But you know, with with storyboards, you know, I could just kind of move things around and just make sure that constraints are set. And then just try out on the on the device, like not even worry about the business logic, at least, you know, I can see something visually. And, you know, storyboards can let you to click and drag and link screens between so you get to act out the wireframes of put together and actually iterate over that. I don't know if that answers your question.

Jeroen Leenarts: 27:54

I think so because the advantage of working on paper, I think, is that you can really, now you can really move your drawing around, at least if you're working with a pencil, you can always erase things and but it's always that you work incrementally and with with a computer, you can really just start over at the push of a button. I can't do that with a piece of paper, I think I have to completely start over and, and start with a blank sheet again, which you most likely don't want to do. But what I find interesting is that, that there is there's also similarity between the two so that you just you lay out, like the groundwork so like, most likely, if you're drawing a face, mostly, you're most likely you look at the overall shape of somebody's hat and just draw that that could be an ellipsis. More like a triangular shape depends a bit on verse. And you do the same with with designing a user interface, I think so you could just create like the wireframe. So the layout so that you know how things are attached to that you have some reference that you can well, in case of a portrait, you if you have a reference, you can put on the ears, the eyes, the distinctive features. And that's the same with with an app, I think, because you first want to know how it looks in general before you really start looking at the individual pixels, I think. But what I also find interesting is that you have like a very art driven background, due to your upbringing and due to the education that you did, but that you also was able that you also were able to carry that over into the work that you seem to be doing nowadays because i i looked a bit at the at the app that you've developed and it's it's really pretty what you've created. And what I find interesting there is that you also worked with barista, so that's like domain experts and that you're refined on their input really. And so you have like this very niche, very delicate products. And and then all of a sudden you just think okay, now I'm going to add Bluetooth scales into the mix. So you describe a little bit how that happens. You had those those those amazing skills from this American company that has like a completely walled off ecosystem for their for their stuff, which was a bit hard to to reverse engineer to connect to really I think, and then you started looking at other skills, and then you started looking at Bluetooth low energy, I think you mentioned so how was the process of like switching away from like creating an app that's like completely your thing and then having to bring into this product With that you created? Well, pretty much like things that are described by other companies. Because if you want to attach to like one of these scales, you just talk to the talk the protocol and get the values. So

Bobby Bobak: 31:00

I mean, I was for like, I was fortunate enough that the, the other scale manufacturers did offer me an SDK that I could actually use for free, which is great. So I was, that was very, very easy. It was just kind of important, a free dynamic framework, adult framework file, and, you know, hooking up their user interface to kind of really read off it and building know some sort of kind of relay to capture the data and capture the timestamps. Yeah, I mean, I like to tinker. I guess that's one way to explain this. I did. I did play around with reverse engineering, those good coffee scales, kind of trying to sniff packets from Bluetooth, signal and so forth, and even tried to reverse engineer some example code. It was actually a lot of people underestimate GitHub. Because there's a lot of hackers who have done that already. So I was kind of just searching GitHub for, for the naval devices that I was, I was kind of trying to reverse engineer and try to look for cheap IDs, because you know, there's, there's a database of every low energy device to guess, you know, approved by F think is FCC.

Jeroen Leenarts: 32:41

But if you look at these, these devices, so Bluetooth low energy, that's like, pretty much sort of like a hardware based standard, is that if you have if you've seen one, Bluetooth low energy device, then if you know how those work, then it's relatively simple to figure out how other Bluetooth low energy devices work. Are there like protocols in there? Or is it like, yeah, you have to talk custom protocols to a specific device, because I've done some Bluetooth low energy, but that was like really low level stuff that I had to like, make my own messages really.

Bobby Bobak: 33:23

So but yes,

Jeroen Leenarts: 33:25

is that is that like, scales, that's like similar controller, similar stuff, similar values that you can get from those.

Bobby Bobak: 33:32

Yeah, so there is a Bluetooth spec for how devices should communicate using Bluetooth. And there is a set of services and characteristics to describe them the nature of the device. So for example, kitchen scales, which is kind of what commonly, coffee scales identify us, they are supposed to broadcast certain weight values, specific characteristic, that, you know, are common, commonly known. And there are services, which is the battery service, and there is a weight service. And there there are other names that do correspond with specific UU IDs. And, and to be fair, you know, cheap coffee scales to use those. But you know, the minute a manufacturer wants some control, they just change this completely or require a is required. The app or you know, the person connecting with the device to kind of identify with a code that's only shared with them by the manufacturer. So it's kind of like a secure down connection. So you may be able to connect on this specific service and read of characteristics data, but you because you've not made the connection with this specific key, the connection is closed. So that's kind of how it works. Yeah, I mean, you'd think it's, you know, it's a common standard, but it's rare. It's, it's actually followed. And

Jeroen Leenarts: 35:24

there's always details to get wrong in the implementation of scale, apparently.

Bobby Bobak: 35:29

Yes, yes, of course. And also there's various ways of encoding the way to data because the quality of chips dictates the price of the unit. So you know, with like the akkaya scales, they are very High precision scales. So there, the load cell does actually capture very fine sub gram values, and they're very high frequency. So you get about 1010 measurements a second, which sounds, which is a lot. And I did try other food scales there had a one reading every five seconds or 10 seconds. So the granularity is down to how much energy will the chip use to, you know, to read the data. And obviously, that's kind of set out by the manufacturer. And also, the data is encoded in various ways, you know, you might get the whole spectrum of information about the device, on one packet, or you might have to subscribe to different characteristics to get like, the unit type, or whether it's ounces, or grams.

Jeroen Leenarts: 36:42

So with these Bluetooth low energy scales, is it like that, you know, like, a ton of things about connecting to Bluetooth low energy scales, and that if you would want to create a new app that, that uses a totally different Bluetooth surface, that you have to like start all over again, or is it like very similar what you then need to do to connect, for instance, to, I don't know, a moisture sensor, or a temperature sensor or stuff like that, or is it is like it just carry over to other device types.

Bobby Bobak: 37:22

And it does carry over I mean, also, iOS developers are fortunate enough that we have apple that did most of the grunt work. And so there is a framework and the apples realm of API's called correlative. And that basically abstracts over the details of actually, you know, using the Bluetooth device to ping other devices and kind of list out and find devices much in a name and so forth. You just kind of instantiate a Bluetooth service, correlative service, and you with a delegate, you can just kind of list out finds, find devices, and then from that, you can decide whether you connect to it. And then you can you start this kind of water flow of events where you know, you find the devices use connects to it, and then you find characteristics and services and connect to it and read off it. So it's very similar. I mean, the only things that differ between the types of devices are the characteristics and service IDs, because they're obviously different. You IDs.

Jeroen Leenarts: 38:42

So, but that's like, the iOS side of things, you also need something to connect to, of course, you could go out and, and buy a kitchen scale that has that that is available in a wide price range. But if you if somebody wants to, like get started with Bluetooth at a more well, basically a more Do It Yourself level, what are some things that people can pick up to get started, so if they're familiar with certain hardware, that you can really start playing around with Bluetooth Low Energy on an iPhone, and the device externally? themselves?

Bobby Bobak: 39:24

So yeah, there are various ways. I mean, I on sevens, coffee scales, just because I turned trust. I mean, it's right. So you can have, you can start and look for implementations on GitHub, I guess, that's what I would I would do is, you know, look for an existing implementation elsewhere. Or at least look for already abstracted SDK, like with in case of Archaia, where they actually managed to release a third party SDKs for app developers, which, you know, is simple, you just kind of create an object and you still that like, you listen to a delegates values in, off you go. But if you really want to hack with things you kind of are really left with actually get into device because you're never sure how the how the actual data looks until you have the device to hack with it, per se, and actually have a scale them on yet to unpack and build build integrations for for filter. So I'm, I'm basically going to be you know, using some sort of like Bluetooth sniffer on the market and kind of captures much. I'm basically going to press on the scale, click all the buttons and capture capture different packets, the nature of it and see what I can. And defeated back is at certain like, which what I do is I just bit shift everything, as I can see at the very lowest of the lowest levels, what data changes and how is encoded?

Jeroen Leenarts: 41:14

So but how many scales are supported by field through at the moment?

Bobby Bobak: 41:19

And seven? So seven Yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 41:23

So and that's like seven specific makes and models or is it like that some support that you have built a feel to that it's like supports a range of skills, because they just happen to use the same technology.

Bobby Bobak: 41:36

And it's it's both. And let me explain. So Archaia, for example, they just issued an SDK, and they you include in your app, and you can connect to any scale that they own. And they've produced. So they abstract this kind of device name matching, and all the scales have the same kind of identity per se for them. But with other other scales, like the Felicita. The name differs between the models. So you might have an espresso scale. And that's like identify as lunar, or parlare. So you need to kind of build your implementation around, right there are the device names are different, and there is no common knowledge between them. So you do need to devise to actually know what the what the what they're actually broadcast. So yeah, I thought I'd kind of do both really is hardcode the specific device names, and obviously leverage API's from from the manufacturer themselves to you know, they kind of abstracted that over. So

Jeroen Leenarts: 42:58

what's the craziest thing that you ever built with core Bluetooth?

Bobby Bobak: 43:04

Craziest thing? Craziest thing with coral? Well, correlative. It's not specific correlative that I was building with, back in my, her web development, days, after university, I, I joined this company, which was doing a lot of kind of interactive installations for museums and art galleries. And we were tasked with building like a treasure hunt for museum goers. And they were given out iPads. And they had to go round with, with the iPad around like an installation of tombs in Lanka, in Lancaster, just kind of East Side in Yeah, to East side of Manchester. So yeah, it was we built like a PhoneGap app. And then we just use JavaScript API that talked to Bluetooth. Because it was quite low budget, really, it was more of a creative process for the designers to kind of, you know, build a cool looking thing for kids to play with. And, you know, the bigger budget for us to explore technologically. So we just kind of forgot to do this. We had a guest, that was a Craziest thing, because he was he was literally trying us debugging in the tomb of the of the castle with spare, like, we basically installed Bluetooth beacons. And we had to kind of record the IDs in specific order and make the app kind of know when somebody skipped a beacon and they had pointed backward to where the location was. And it was a treasure hunt for us as well. Because we had to know this specific route. And if we skipped one, we also had to kind of debug the process for us.

Jeroen Leenarts: 45:13

Okay, so that's the what a cold again, because I still remembered a presentation on these things by by Apple. That's it was it was like the next best thing, but iBeacons Yeah, but it never really took off. Right?

Bobby Bobak: 45:29

Yeah. It seems like then. Yeah. So I mean, there was a lot of Yeah, sorry. I was. I was gonna say there was many, like, shopping malls. Did kind of make use of them. For indoor navigation by I never encountered an adapter would use it. Yeah, I just don't want.

Jeroen Leenarts: 45:56

So, so but with the with the app that supports coffee scales, and that has helped you with the process of brewing coffee? Are there more features or more things that the app can support people with? So I can, like connect to like a coffee machine itself or something? Yeah.

Bobby Bobak: 46:19

Yeah, I mean, I did. There's more and more Bluetooth enabled things for coffee. Coffee geeks, which is great. There is there is a kettle from an electric kettle from a company called fat called fellow. Yeah. They're also based in California. It's, it's a really cool kettle, because you can preset your water temperature just remotely, so you can, you know, have it downstairs. And in the morning, you can just kind of press a button and let it kind of boil water to this exact temperature, you want to make your coffee with their coffee grinders that you can kind of preset and control the coarseness and, and obviously kind of control it as in turning on turning off and stop it whenever. And there is an amazing company called Decent Espresso. And they're based in Hong Kong, I think. And they built a whole full blown espresso machine do you can hack they literally guy, John, founder of the company who is like he's he's a hacker at heart. He was like, I love espresso. And I love tech, I'm gonna build some cool hardware. So he's building this this coffee coffee machine. And it's it's a lot of award winning baristas just swear by it, because they can control every little. for them. It's a revelation. Because before it was like a you know, an espresso machine is quite big one. And you really just control the pressure. Yeah, at a very rudimentary level, you just kind of changed the bar, the pressure. And you can really just change the the all you can really control is how you grind the coffee and how you kind of time the coffee. But with his machine with with this custom coffee machine, he controls everything because you can control the flow, the pressure, the timing in which the boiler heats up and, and how the boiler behaves for you to kind of pour the amazing coffee. Like an espresso shot. It's it's great. And it's all open because you can see Scott is going massive documentation of like how you actually how you connect with Bluetooth interface and which services do you kind of connect with to actually control the din the machine itself?

Jeroen Leenarts: 49:01

So but you're saying that's actually water kettles out there that you while you're like somewhere else, you can actually trigger them to to boil you a bottle of water.

Bobby Bobak: 49:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I kind of I'm hoping to integrate it soon.

Jeroen Leenarts: 49:21

Okay, yeah. So but the filtro app, it's the main thing that you do as a software developer or is it like more a side hustle or

Bobby Bobak: 49:34

it's a side hustle? Yeah, it's um I'm kind of always a side hustle guy. I just I work in work in music industry doing like a data driven apps for like a record labels to kind of help them find emerging artists and kind of get to know the the industry for them no audience. So kind of Felsher is my creative outlet on that front, because I get to build a cool thing that I would use. And I know a lot of people use as well. And I can control it fully, as in design, implement and play around with like the, you know, the hardware integrations. It's yeah, I'm hoping to kind of make a more of a bigger part of my career. I've kind of built an E commerce engine into it. So you can actually buy coffee from within the app. And the app knows your kind of behavior and when you are running out of coffee, so it can suggest you you know, and interest in coffee blend or like a cool new coffee bean from your either local roaster or someone completely unheard of which is, you know, it's great because coffee people love varieties. And always, they're always on the lookout for new things. Yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 51:06

Okay, cool. One thing that I promised to ask you is the first computer that you actually got your hands on. While you were like a lot younger. Do you still remember that one?

Bobby Bobak: 51:21

Yeah, yeah. It was a Pentium one. And it had probably like four mega RAM in graphics card was shocking. That was the first computer I've had. I got it for, for my, like a communion, all the communion gift thing. And they died pretty quickly. The motherboard just just gave up. But the second computer voice probably did. It was like a tank. It was a Pentium two had to two gigabyte hard drive. And I've done some really cool, cool things with it. Like it taught me how to make apps and games and even kind of had to go at making 3d animation for like a competition. And I grew up, I literally ground up machine to death with the animation. It died a week later after I sent this CD with the burned video.

Jeroen Leenarts: 52:29

So yeah, it's shorted out, probably due to overheating. So would you say that because you mentioned that the first computer he got was like sort of a gift that was given to you. Was that like instrumental in getting you interested into software technology and computers in general?

Bobby Bobak: 52:52

Not at Ferris now. I think I was still kind of in primary school at the time. So I was more of a I don't know, just kind of finding my way around. I don't know being at school. I think it was it was after the computer, after I got the second computer is when like it teacher noticed, I'm kind of, you know, dabbling with, like, installing apps and all that. So he kind of gave me this, this app called click and play. Yeah. Which was like a game editor, you could literally just drag and drop onto of assets and make, like add behaviors to those assets and to build like a racing game. So I that was when I I started getting serious about computers. Because it was something that it was had really low barrier to entry. It was just an app do you just kind of click around with was enough to get me captivated and start trying for you know, get more into it? Yeah.

Jeroen Leenarts: 54:03

So was it like mostly the games that that pulled you in? Or like doing your own creative things? Or what what was what was the attraction?

Bobby Bobak: 54:13

It was the fact that I could make my own games because everyone else had like, a Pentium three and Pentium four at the time. So like the play GTA Vice City, and, you know, you know, when you with your with your friends, you've talked about games, really. So I was like, I can't really play games because I don't even have a voodoo graphics. Or it was it was very, it was like an office computer. So I was like, right, well, guess I'll try and make my games. Yeah, so the kind of the click and play really helps kind of get me into making my own things with computers.

Jeroen Leenarts: 54:55

Okay, cool. Is there anything that we've forgotten to talk about?

Bobby Bobak: 55:03

I don't know. We talked about the future. I guess it's worth, I don't know, I'm building the next version of filtro. could talk about some cool features in Anagha. Go

Jeroen Leenarts: 55:17

ahead. What what so you already have the filter app available. And you have some plans for a new version? Or what's the what's the process there?

Bobby Bobak: 55:27

Yeah, so filter has been out since 2016. So now it's kind of grown massively to the point where have about 5000 daily users and just making coffee and just kind of sharing it on Instagram and kind of mean being happy that it can, there's some something helped them. A lot of coffee geeks use it for like a journaling. So they use it for just kind of keeping their methods and starting a little coffee journal. So I'm working on more pro oriented feature set in Fela true to kind of aid, this journaling and kind of notetaking aspects of coffee brewing. Some have built this coffee scanner, which is utilizing vision framework from Apple, and a lot of regular explant expressions, because ML is not great. Yeah, so I've built an eldest, I was 14, I think they released improvements to vision framework in to OCR technology, and so you can actually, you know, think the example they had was scanning number plates or business cards, and you can actually pick out certain information and categorize that later. So I thought, well, coffee, coffee bags are various designs, but there's something common, always like the name of the country, the coffee comes from in the name of the roasters and kind of wanted to help with note taken by just leveraging the iPhones camera. And so I built this calendar where you could just literally point their phone at their coffee bag, and they will pick out all the text. And categorize all that and kind of present you with a review form where you can just say, right, that's the coffee I'm having. And this is the amount of the bag wage, I want the app to kind of reduce reduce from. So when it when it kind of coffee ends, as you use Filter to brew coffee with, you'll kind of know that you're running out running low in the world, hence you to buy some more. But there's also other feature which you kind of, I've always, I'm fond of because it came out of Coffee Festival, I was fortunate enough to kind of have a stand at and kind of help people learn more about coffee. That makes sense. So I was a local coffee roastery contacted me if I want to help them help them turn around a coffee station because it's a coffee festivals is usually you walk around with, you know, with a pamphlet and you walk to various stations, talk to coffee roasters and they just give you samples where you never know where this how this sample came to be of coffee. So with this coffee roaster, we just turned around, so we had people coming over and we let them make coffee. And with my app, there was quite a simple intuitive process because we had coffee skills ready and paired with their phones. And people just kind of follow the process. And then then they we could as they brew coffee, we can talk to them about the process and the equipment that can buy and the coffee, they can, you know, sample and buy as well. And teach them that it's really not that hard to make really good tasting coffee. But we kind of what I've noticed is that putting together of the equipment was the struggling part where they really didn't didn't know how to you know how to assemble, like an AeroPress or how to fold coffee, filters, and so forth, right? I'm going to build some sort of feature in my app to aid with this. And at the time AR kit came about. And I was like, that's great. You can show people the equipment before they get to buy it. self builders it's gonna be released in the next version of filtro. And

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:00:08

mostly, I don't know what

Bobby Bobak: 1:00:12

keeps a kid Yeah, it'll be done when it's done. I keep saying every, every month I say by the end of the month. Well I just yeah, I'm dragging my feet with it. It's like a an era AR brew guide where it right in front of you and your table. It shows you all this equipment, all the steps you need and you just flick cards, and the animations kind of put things together for you and show you up Close how you could use this equipment, and I think that's going to be grateful even for training, that coffee roastery when I showed them the demo, they were like, we can train our wholesale customers because they are cafes, and they you always have new baristas coming on board in and we can train them how to make coffee with this with our recipe and you know, they can use AR to, to learn it.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:01:10

So that that's like that you're building a sort of like a teaching component on top of what you already have in fill through, but in a way that it's more usable in, in the kiosk type environments, like on a, on a stand in a in a venue and but also in a more company training type capacity. So that you can really take people through sort of like a little curriculum that is specific to that location, so that so that you learn how to be a barista, the way that that specific company wants you to be.

Bobby Bobak: 1:01:51

Yeah, apparently, I mean, you know, there's so much to being a barista than just, you know, making coffee release customer service and all sorts of kind of management parts. And well, yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to help. baristas kind of fall but make the best out of coffee. Because Coffee Roasters usually have a profile for their coffee. And they have recipes which you know, can be shared, fulfilled true. And, and baristas can follow the recipe directly from the roaster. So they will prepare coffee for the customer, the way the roasters have designed it in a way if that makes sense. And so the filter will kind of help with that part. And make that easier.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:02:43

Okay. So and So that's like version two of filtro that you're working on. And version three tree now. Yeah, version three already. And it's something that will be done once it's done. But how can people stay up to date on its progress?

Bobby Bobak: 1:03:04

And I'm hoping to release it before Christmas. That's That's my kind of soft deadline, I'd say. But if anybody wants to give it a go, I do have a test flight link with plenty of seats to try and play around with. So any feedback is welcome. And I'll let you I'll share the link so you can post in release notes, I guess. Otherwise, just follow me on Twitter. And I always share some screenshots and kind of fun learnings that I find as I build and life it's Bob back underscore barley neck.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:03:48

Okay. And I'll make sure to link that from the show notes that so that people can can have an easy click and then follow. Thank you. Yeah, and I'll also make sure to include a link to your products. And so that's the filtro app, and to your test, flight test flight once you shared it. And yeah, and is there anything else that people need to know about you or how they can find you online? Besides Twitter and agile products?

Bobby Bobak: 1:04:21

And I think that's it. I'm eluding myself to I'll start a blog one day, but I feel like I don't have enough to say he is Yeah, I guess it's like finding time, I'm constantly working. Let's just put it that way of renovating a house and working third through and then obviously doing main contract work. So yeah, maybe one day, I'll kind of I should probably write about how I built like the coffee scanner and AR features because I think it would be useful for someone wanting to learn more. Because, you know, sure, Apple has frameworks, but there's so many caveats that I've come to learn, especially with AR content and preparation of 3d models and so forth. So I guess follow me on Twitter. And if I launch a blog, that's where now, where else should

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:05:23

I go? You could always do conference talk about it.

Bobby Bobak: 1:05:27

Yeah, yeah. I never actually thought about doing so.

Jeroen Leenarts: 1:05:32

Maybe, who knows. So, Bobby, thank you very much for your time. I think we covered a lot. And I really look forward to what people think about So about Phil tool and the way that you came to this product ring, and I look forward to talk to you again in the future. Maybe Keep me updated on when the new version filter is available, because I look forward to see which created the next version. And say, Thanks for your time and we'll talk again in the future.

Bobby Bobak: 1:06:15

Thank you for having me. Thank you. It's been a it's been a great