Sandbox Smart 4+

So I got a phone call while roasting and guess what happened it disconnected from the Sandbox R1 unit and stopped mid roast. If you have a old iphone or ipad to use as a stand alone device that wont get any interference then use it. I had to finish my roast in a pan, still better than your ordinary off the shelf coffee but just okay.

Lots of problems. Here we go. (1) Only way to use their roaster is to use the app. The stock roast profiles are meh. They make you pay for their more advanced profiles (robbery). As you learn their roaster and try to understand their more advanced paid for profiles, they purposefully do not let you see their power/fan/drum speed settings, making it harder to learn and love their machine. Makes me want to throw it out and buy a more open roaster. It’s as if they feel like they need to pay for their software developers through subscription fees when they should sell more overall devices and become a bigger share of the home roasting market. Their strategy limits adoption given bad reviews of their customers (2) The app design is poor. Some screens force landscape while others do not allow landscape. Their users want landscape on all forms, but they haven’t resolved in the years the app has been out. Editing profiles are way too hard. Trial and error is how roasters work. It should be incredibly easy to just move control points around on a touch device (it’s not). Figuring out how to get to the screens to modify the past roast profile and edit is convoluted. Honestly, the app needs a tear down and redo it’s so poor.

Sometimes this app logs out in the middle. Which can be very frustrating when you have everything planned. And with very expensive beans it can ruin a whole batch