Wired Founder’s Chocolate Factory Monitored by iPhone
Wired founder Louis Rossetto’s new business, artisan chocolate company TCHO (technology + chocolate) lives up to its name.
The San Francisco chocolate plant is full of industrial hacks, including common kitchen gadgets, like turkey roasters and curry mixers, a $40 space heater from Walgreens and a dryer duct. (Take a peek inside the chocolate works with a video).
Where does the iPhone come in? Tcho founders commissioned an automation software to allow for 3-D monitoring of the labs from the device.
They’ll be checking on a new kind of fermentaria, boxes used to naturally ferment cacao, developed by former Nasa scientist Timothy Childs.
“In Peru, we’re setting up weather and fermentation monitoring and sensory analysis. We are putting temperature probes in the middle of fermentation boxes,” said Childs. “We are creating a baseline of data. We are telling farmers to charge us more for beans when they get it right. We are saying, ‘If you go from 60 percent fermentation to 72 percent, we will pay more.’ We want better uniformity in fermentation.”
More details as we get them…
Via SF Chronicle
Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco native who has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek. You can find her on 
