Product was provided for free, however the review is my honest opinion
I am a technology geek at heart. I love all kinds of gadgets and when I find something related to my Wine passion, I am all for it.
My Sensorist Large Wine kit arrived at Chris’s office, but I forgot to tell her staff I was expecting a delivery. They opened the shipping box and found a few sensors. Her business is a low voltage company so this product could potentially fit the portfolio, but they were a bit confused trying to figure it out before discovering that it wasn’t a WEBCO related product.
I could not wait to get home and install the Sensorist Wine Pack.
Upon opening the box, I found a number of items. The large wine kit includes: 1 x gateway, 2 x sensor with batteries, 1 x wine probe, 1 x domestic (US) power supply and an Ethernet cable.
Installation was very easy, the kit included a one page installation guide. I also had the option of viewing the installation guide on the Sensorist website.
First, I installed batteries into the two sensors. Installation requires a philips screw driver to remove four screws from the bottom cover. The screws were very tight at first and the first screw driver was giving me slight problems. I was concerned that I may strip the screws, so I resorted to another screw driver. Once the covers were removed, installation of the batteries was very easy. Re-installing the screws was much easier so I think when I have to replace the batteries I should be fine.
The next step was installing the gateway into my network. The gateway requires a wired connection to my home network, which wasn’t a problem since I have many available ports. I did not have to configure the gateway at all, which would be a bonus for people not familiar with networking or trying to figure out how to configure device’s on their home network. It is plug and play.
The directions did not mention any distance requirements from the sensors to the gateway so I decided to install the gateway under my desk upstairs in my office. The sensors will be installed in both cellars that are located down in the basement, which I estimate to be about twenty-five feet from the gateway.
Once the gateway was plugged into my network and powered up, all I had to do was press the button on the gateway, as well as on each of the sensors. It took seconds for the two devices to pair with each other, so it must be a blue tooth connection between the gateway and sensors. Once paired it was time to install the sensors in my cellars and then I had to log in and create my account.
I need to mount the sensor on the wall so it is stable.
The account creation takes less time than installing the hardware. After a few questions and keystrokes I was all set and shortly after I was able to see the status of my cellars online.
Setting up my details was straight forward. Enter your name, time zone, units and you are done.
The device list shows the sensors and probes. You can name them anything you want.
I also installed the Sensorist application on my iPhone and logged in. I would recommend push notifications so that if there are changes within your cellar the Sensorist application will notify your cell phone once you setup alarms. I wonder if you get a notification if a battery is low?
The final step I needed to do was install the wine probe. I had an empty bottle of wine in my recycle bin that I cleaned and filled with tap water. Once the bottle was full I inserted the sensor in the bottle. I plugged the end of the cable into the sensor and seconds later I received my first notification on my phone. This is pretty cool!
I installed the bottle with probe half way between the floor and ceiling.
So how did I rate the Sensorist Large Wine kit?
Hardware installation – five glasses
Software setup – five glasses
iPhone application – five glasses
Ease of use – five glasses
Price – $140 EU (less than $200 US) – five glasses. There is a lot of technology here and I think they have it priced right.
Overall – Five glasses!
You can be a beginner or expert at using technology. The Sensorist Wine Sensor is easy to install and use – period. I had been in contact with the Sensorist team over the past months. I was able to get a quote from CEO and Founder of Sensorist Kasper Mejlgaard. “We really feel that ease of use and wonderful design are fundamental to our users, so that they can focus on getting insights and history of their data, and not have to worry about a difficult set up, configuring and other technical stuff, and just let us do the hard work of visualizing and applying statistics that’s useful to the user”
The only downfall is the time it takes to ship. Shipping to the US takes about three weeks from Denmark, but I am sure Sensorist can improve the shipping time with a local distributor so be patient as it is worth the wait.
I think the Sensorist team did a great job. If you have a green house they have a kit for you and there is a kit for general use.
Another Sensorist application idea is for wine making. It would be useful to be able to keep track of my juice temperature during and after the fermentation, and once it is in a barrel or carboy aging. Manual measurements are not an option if you want to make wines of the same consistency year over year. The Sensorist would help remove another variable you have to keep track manually.
For more details on the Sensorist Wine Kit here is the link to their website Sensorist.
In Vino Veritas!
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