This episode of the HVAC school podcast is made possible by our great sponsors field piece and feel peace, calm makers of the JobLink probes, the mr 45 recovery machine and vp 85 vacuum pump all available at treating tools, true tech tools, comm also refrigeration technologies, they're going To be at booth, be four four one, seven at HR in atlanta and i'm going to be at their booth at three pm on the fourteenth, which is monday. If you want to come by and say, hey and see some of the refrigeration technologies products meet. John pastor, ello you'll have a good time at their booth, they're, really great great folks, also nav and navigable comm. They make all kinds of great tools and I've actually been warming up to their little hand, swedge tool.

It's a very simple small swedge tool that you can use with one hand. It takes a little bit of technique, so you've got to get used to using it, but it fits nicely in the tool bag, especially if you're a tool bag kind of a guy. Maybe a video guy, you should take a look at their little hands wedge tool, it's a nice thing to have in the bag and then also I want to as always thank erases air Oasis, calm and you can check out their nano and bipolar products. By going to their website, Aero Asus comm four slash go to get more information and, finally, as always, thank you to carrier for all their support and now for the guy who sheds a tear and whispers free on eight free.

Every time he finds a leaking braze joint on a warranty call, Brian or alright, you found the HVAC school podcast. This is the podcast that helps you remember some things that you might have forgotten along the way as well as helps. You remember some things you forgot to know in the first place, and this is a broad conversation I'm having with Jim jim, has had so much stuff going on and if you don't know who Jim is, I don't know where you've been, but it's Jim Berkman owner Of measure, quick and rich fish meters and all sorts of other things that he does for the industry. But he's had a lot going on over the last six months and we found on the podcast a couple times.

But I wanted him to kind of just review. Everything that's going on with measure quick with blue vac, with cefco with red fish with testo with field piece. Bacharach is also mixed in there somewhere, there's all kinds of different things going on with measure quick, and so we just go soup-to-nuts what it looks like now with measurement tools, Bluetooth measurement tools, integrating them together and what the future is. Gon na look like with measure quick, nobody better to talk to about this subject than Jim.

So here we go Jim Bergman talking about the future of app connected tools, thanks for coming back on the podcast with us, Jim, hey what we can say there, not too shabby. I was gon na come up with something smart, but then I just backed it off, because it's so early in the podcast I figured I'd at least wait or thirty seconds in okay, it seems like maybe, with the Christmas break. You've been taking a little bit of a hiatus a little bit of a nap, maybe you're off your game. A little bit.

Is this gon na go okay, I think so I don't think I've really stopped. I let everybody else take a little bit of break. I gave everybody at the office the time off till the second nice in I've been working on the vision plan for measure quick and where it's gon na go over the next couple of months and well. It is nice that it's a little bit of time to clear my own mind to think about things I want to do it.

We want to go so it's got some pretty cool stuff going. I'm just gon na ask you all kinds of questions, and then I know you'll just say whatever you want anyway, sort of like a politician. You ask one question, then you get a totally different answer. So, let's start here, you actually have three different apps that you've helped develop for yourself and then in conjunction with others, would you mind reviewing what the three apps are? Oh gosh, it might even be more than three apps bright.

Actually well, there's three that I know about yes, so there's the tech link app, we developed four sub Co. The tech clean camps are electrical diagnostic app and we actually we bought redfish. We really weren't showering to go to market with that and about that time, sup go call us. It actually looked at the redfish meter before and they're very interested in it and they were looking for a they didn't want to get the app development business.

So it was like a win-win: they had a pretty strong distribution presence, one of the stronger ones in the industry, and we were like this is probably a good fit for us. So we built out the tech link app and what we're doing different sub coasts really trying to step their game up a little bit when it comes to the electrical side. We had a lot of meters that there weren't the best quality in the world and they're really trying to get away from some of that and get into some higher-end meters. That could do some better Diagnostics, so we developed outs tech link with them to do not only do electrical Diagnostics, but then you know tighten with our meters.

So it's a pretty slick, little app because it really helps people in an area where a lot of guys need help and it's electrical readings and this it walks you through not only how to test the components. But it also does some things with utilization testing things like that. We're actually doing a little refresh on an app because we're tying in the redfish I DBM 550 meter, that's pretty slick, that's a power quality analyzer and we're really interested in the 550, specifically for the power measurement side, because we do a lot and measure quick with Measuring eer seer and that new 550 it does the voltage, the amperage and the power factor, and so we can get a true power and it's got a really really good low-end resolution. It goes down to about 3 watts.

It's really good for things like seer or eer of an air conditioning system, as well as a fan watch, which is your CFM for watts of power consumed. So that's pretty slick and then blue vac is the other app. We built out for a key tools and that's tied in now with all three of their vacuum gauges and that's a really unique app because it does documentation of the evacuation process. So it does a complete pull down from start to finish, showing you not only the where you're at in the vacuum, but also the decay, and then it does a really nice reporting feature.

So if you want to document the total evacuation, you can make a report or something set it aside for documentation for the manufacturer that it was done correctly or especially, like guys doing, mini splits and things like that. They should be documenting the evacuation, a really cool product for that and the other one is or big one is, are quick and the measure. Quick application really ties all those tools together. So we have not tied into blue vac app yet, but we are tying in redfish meters.

Blue vac definitely will tie in elements of that in to measure quick. But a lot of those who are trying to do too is keep some of the features separate. So, like tech link is electrical Diagnostics, blue vac is vacuum Diagnostics and then measure quick is more on the air conditioning commissioning side. So those are the three big product.

So we've got some other products too for other industries we built out, but those are the three big ones for the HVAC industry. Wow, that's a lot! Let's ask this question because I think some people wonder this and I don't know how much of the master plan you're willing to divulge, because I think it probably ends with just taking over the world. But what is sort of your end game? What are you wanting to accomplish with all these I mean there's a couple different end games in hearing a lot of this. Is, I don't know if you paid a lot of attention to measure quick, but almost everything out there.

In fact, everything we put out there. So far has been at no charge to anybody out there and a lot of our end game is educating the industry and helping technicians, be better technicians and more productive and Tainan, or put two tools. In fact, we have not even charged manufacturers testo field piece. A cue tools for inclusion in the measure, quick application.

We do have some monetization plans for measure quick and those will come in, probably the next three or four months. We will start monetizing a little bit, but our primary modification plan has been with utility clients that are using it for aggregating the data and then verifying the readings from within an acceptable set of ranges and then transmitting them for a measure quick to their server. So a lot of the work that we're doing to the utility space is actually subsidized. A lot of things were given away in the measure, quick application and eventually what we really want to be as an OS, an operating system for Bluetooth equipped or test holes.

The whole big idea behind us is that a lot of the manufacturers are really good at making a measurement, but they just don't have a clue what to do with that measurement of how that measurements going to be used within the HVAC industry. Well a case, a point Dennis Cardinale who has genius when it comes to sensor technology and he designed the Center for the blue back in the vacuum. Gauge he's never evacuated a residential air conditioning system, because it's not the type of work he does. I runs on a vacuum pump.

All the day works in the lab all day until he started working with us a little bit in a measure. You really didn't have a deep understanding of how these tools were being applied in the industry and some of the challenges that guys were coming across with them and where they're attaching them to the system and how they were being used. And he just had a certain set of assumptions about this thing. I worked for testo years ago, and the Germans testo had a whole different opinion about how the measurements are used, because they thought that, like in Germany, you had to be go through an apprenticeship and you had to go through years of schooling before you getting put Your hands on a combustion analyzer and that's the same way.

It was over here and they didn't realize if they were putting tools into the market, that people really didn't have a firm understanding of how to use. So they built probably one of the world's best combustion analyzers. I mean they make great products out there, but the challenge was is that they were putting them in a market where people didn't understand how to use them, and so we did the same thing. When active tools decided, you know I want to get into a combustion.

Analyzer to get some of the law out of there doing all vacuum tools, primarily, so they wanted to do something on the heating side of the market, and I found a combustion analyzer. So one of things we did, we tied it into the measure, quick application and built it in is a diagnostic app. So it'll do actually combustion diagnostics in there and it's just a way for the tool manufacturers to focus on the tools without having to focus on the software side. Because the software side is probably the toughest part of the business, because everybody and their brother thinks that there's tons of money to be made in software.

But it just requires a ton of work and a ton of maintenance and a ton of upkeep that unless you have a very specific game plan and how you're going to do it, that I'm afraid it just it's a tough market to get into and we've seen It over and over again, and what we've seen primarily, is a bunch of apps that are pretty lackluster. You can connect to them. You can see your readings on there, but, aside from that, they really don't do much. Maybe they calculate a super heat or calculate a sub cooling, but they don't take it to that next level and assist with not only what the readings are, but what they should be and then what combinations those readings mean in general to help you with a system Diagnostic or detailed reporting, so a lot of different things going on there, and one thing you and I have talked about for several years now - is just in time: education, where you're educating and you are providing more in-depth measurements that typically technicians would shy away from.

But now you're giving some sense of what those measurements should be and what they actually mean for the system and in measure quick, the primary app. It has really nice needles, that kind of point to the Green Zone. And then you can drill down and learn more information if they're, outside of that it gives you faults all of that and I'll just kind of throw in there that what you've done really well is build fantastic software. That does exactly what it's supposed to do and like most things in the industry, there's a lot of products out there that do one or two things well, but then they kind of dropped.

The ball on another areas and measure quick, is just really really does what it's supposed to do across the range of all the measurements that you're integrating with it and we've talked a lot about how you built it to kind of start with the largest use cases. In a Minimum Viable Product, the sort of thing that the industry needed and now you're starting to add in all these additional features to the software, which is great starting off with the non-invasive testing, which was really innovative first of its kind on the marketplace. But now you've added in the gas side, you started adding in the gas side, so introduce that to us. What are you doing there? That actually is a huge project? I don't think we realized how big of a project it was till we got into it, because not only we think of gas furnaces, you got a 90, you got an 80, you got 70, you got gravity furnaces.

You have category one two, three and four venting systems. You have natural gas, you have propane, you have electric furnaces. You have all these different things out there that we really had to build out profiles for each one of these appliances and then sort of map out a process. Probably my biggest frustration with our software is that when I see some people using it, they don't use it to its full potential.

It's like we built a graphing calculator and all people are using it for sometimes it's addition subtraction multiplication, it's like it does all these other really cool things, but because they don't have necessarily a formal education in our industry. They haven't been exposed to these things. So that's where we're trying to really take it to the next level and put all the indicators and sting of the gauges, so that was they see these things and they see something's out of range they can tap on. I get that just-in-time education because early on, like with combustion, analyzers one of the things that drove me crazy is I bought my first combustion analyzer and I'm looking at o2 and CEO and co2, a dew point and two stack temperature and gross efficiency and net efficiency And I'm like: what does all this stuff mean and I get fixated on maybe like Co, air free, which is not a bad thing to be fixated on, but you're missing.

All the other elements? Well, the combustion analyzer can do we see the consistently across the board? Is people by these tools and their diagnostic tools and they're using them to do a some kind of a single function when the Accu Tools blue flame? It obviously does it's a combustion analyzer, but it's also got differential temperature on and it's also got differential pressure on. It so it can be used, not only measure your stack temperature, but your temperature rise across your furnace or your temperature rise across your boiler, or it can be used for Casas testing, because it's got a really high-resolution manometer on it. It can be used for sending the gas pressure on your furnace. It could be used to check out the inlet pressure.

Your total external static pressure can be used for checking your pressure switches, this tool that does ten thousand different processes. Yet people only use it for one thing and then maybe in that time, a lot of them don't using it correctly. So our goal with measure quick was to really get people the next level to where, when they're buying these high-end tools, we can walk them through a process that helps them fully leverage the tool, fully leverage the software and then teaches them as they go along. What to do when things are outside of the desired range, so we're not only looking at safety, but we're also looking at efficiency and we're sometimes looking at comfort.

So it's a multi-faceted tool because our industry shouldn't be fixated on a single measurement to make every decision on and that sadly, a lot of times what's done, a lot of guys think commissioning. Air conditioning system is getting the sub cooling set right and that's about where they stop. I will guarantee in 90 % of the guys in industry, don't measure air flow and they don't have tools to measure air flow. And if you asked what the airflow should be a lot of them can't even tell you I go out and ask technicians all the time.

Just tell me what the tonnage of a piece of equipment is looking at the model number and they don't know. So it's like we're trying to come up with tools to help solve these types of problems and that's a big part of what we're trying to do with a measure, quick software, but no that's exactly it and that's what I wanted you to hit on is with The furnace side you're continuing to build on these modules, because HVAC nhac are, if you want to even expand to beyond that, is such a large industry that even building the comprehensive refrigerant readings software isn't enough, and you've shown that now you have the electrical measurements you At the vacuum measurements those are in separate apps currently, but once you start to bring all of this together now, you cannot only provide answers to questions that technicians have, but you're also committed to providing the training and the education the. Why, behind what it is? They're learning it, which is what makes mr. Kwik so unique in my mind, besides the fact that it's just it's tremendous, offer very well developed software, I've screwed around with software in the past - and I know how hard it is.

Those of you who know my story about my little web startup today, I've blown in six figures of my own money when I didn't have it to blow trying to build software, and it's very very challenging to do so. I know the investment that it's taken, but now recently something I'm really excited about is the fact that other manufacturers of instruments are starting to get on board and starting to see the vision of the fact that not only can you help the industry, but you can Help them by allowing their tools to be integrated into measure quick. So two companies that come to mind recently are both field piece and then test, oh, and so, if you wouldn't mind taking a little bit and talking about the evolution of that and now what you're? Actually able to do with their probe sets, we started off with the testo app tap, and then we also did some stuff early on to support the AI manifold customers that were using that product and it's interesting because it seems like nobody's, got a hundred percent complete Solution and in measure quick, we've been able to help tie that together and a case in point is on the gas heating side. We just did talk about that for just a second, so gas, heating sort of nice, because everything's sort of local understanding at the furnace.

Typically, you've got supply and return air or right there in a ductwork you're measuring the incoming gas pressure, the manifold pressure, maybe the total external static pressure or the draught pressure and you're doing a combustion test, and we have all those tools literally within a few feet Of each other, but nobody makes all the tools that we need to actually do the test, so it measure quickvid will tie all that stuff together. So when we're doing a combustion test, people don't realize how interdependent everything is, for example, manifold pressure, so you're sitting area you the meter or you find out the things a little bit under fire and you got ta, adjust your manifold pressure. Well, what happens when you change your manifold pressure? Well, what happens we adjust the manifold pressure up is obviously we use more gas, we use more gas or excess air. Everything goes down or stack.

Temperature goes up or dew point. Temperature changes or efficiency goes up or down depending on if we're burning, more or less efficient. Our draft changes on the appliance or temperature rise goes up. Is we have more fuel now and we have more heat in there? We have our manifold pressure changes.

Our draft may or may not change our combust years own may depressurize more or less. Depending on what happens. We have an increase in the stack temperature in there. So it's like all these things happen at once and if you're watching a single reading, you're missing the entire story what's happening, it's like watching a movie versus looking at a picture.

If I were to look at a picture of what happened over your holiday break, maybe your son wrapping his Vito bag versus watching a movie of it. I'd learn a whole bunch more about the story of what's going on in that short amount of time, because a video tells us so much more that's happening and that's sort of what we're doing in the measure. Quick software is because we're able to tie all these tests - oh smart probes, live because we're able to tie into the blue flame analyzer life. Now we can take all these readings and we can see how everything affects everything and we can do all the diagnostics in real time.

It just opened up a host of new possibilities. The field piece probes were really great for us, because field piece had extended a range one of the big frustrations, and this goes back to manufacturers, not actually understanding how people wanted to use the tools test, though, when they design their smart probes. They assume that you would only want to make measurements where you're standing right, because for years, they've developed probes that were all at displays on them and if you weren't standing there, you couldn't see the display, so it didn't make sense to measure inside and outside at The same time, but once we got tools that could stream the data now it made a whole host of sense to be inside and outside at the same time, well feel peace and their job linked probes did a tremendous job on given us wireless range better than Anybody out in the market right now for tooth and with that came along the ability now to see what was going inside and outside at the same time. So now, if I want to know what my return air wet-bulb is and my outdoor air temperature is - and so I can do a calculation target superheat, I can actually do that now with JobLink probes, but feel peace.

In the other hand like right now, they don't have a bluetooth manometer. So if I want to know what my total external static pressure is now, I need to tighten the testo probes of that. So what what's really cool about? What we're doing with measure quick? Is you as a technician, you put the tools you want in your toolbox. So if you want some field P stuff, you want some tests, those stuff.

You want some blue flame stuff. You want to you, know energy conservatory, board or gauge in there. Whatever you might have your red fish meter, we can tie all those different tools and - and we can start using for brands independently for the measurements they're coming into your testing. So it actually allows us to use field piece tests, Oh both at the same time or energy conservatory.

I can use a blue flame. I can use three or four different meters all at the same time and pull them in and look at that data and live streaming and actually do a much more effective diagnostic than I ever could making the measurements individually all right. So, let's talk specifically about some things that you can specifically now do that you weren't able to do before without having the integration between these components. So, let's start with field piece, because that was a big guy opener for everyone.

I know it was for our tax. We didn't have a lot of tax, you had the field piece probes on their trucks, but a couple of them did and it really changed the game for them with using measure quick. I think because we actually use the tools what's interesting. I guess if people understood a little bit of our design processes, we don't have a bunch of people sitting around program that don't have any idea how the tools are used.

I'll sit down. The programming team will go over what kind of an outcome and want to have, and I really don't tell the guys how we need to get there as much as okay, here's the things we need to measure, here's what it needs to do and here's the typical Scenario that we're going to have, and I'm not the guy sort of do the programming on it and they hand it to me, and then I actually test it. And when I test it, I haven't really had a lot of input and how it was programmed at that point, because what I don't want to do is micromanage the programmers, because there might be some really good ways of doing something that I just haven't. Thought of.

Yet because I'm not a programmer, I have a limited knowledge about how things could get done, so I don't want to limit them on how they do them, and so after I get to use it what's pretty cool, is they get to see how I use it And then they go oh wow. If we don't even use it that way, I could have done a little bit differently or a little bit better and then we'll sit down, we'll redo it and then we'll get what we call as a Minimum Viable Product out. So what you see today and measure quick is not what you're going to see six months or a year from now, so what we call our Minimum Viable Product, it's what we consider enough that you can use it and it does exactly what you want it to Do but it's not it's refined version we're going to have it in the future, so you're talking about things that you could do now that you couldn't do before. Obviously, one of the big things we talked about was using probes from different manufacturers and the same software.

I think that's probably one of the coolest things and measure quick is we've been able to get the manufacturers together and allow field piece and test, oh and blue flame and active tools and redfish, conservatory retro tech, CPS and they'll all work together or we're tying. All these different tools and different manufacturers together, say they can actually work in the same software. Coaches, nobody's ever even done that type of thing before the second thing we've done is to, I think, much better manage some of the Bluetooth tool connections and some of the manufacturers do. We've worked really really hard on making sure that the tools when you put them in your toolbox can be mapped to specific functions that they connect very quickly that if they disconnect they reconnect quickly that we have taken an account.

It's like some of the limitations like the test. Oh probes. We can capture measurements because we want the ability to capture things because we know we might go outside and we're gon na lose them. If we don't capture them, so we've just been able to understand the use case, a lot better and then make workarounds and the software that the tools are now function in a way, that's usable, I think a lot of people early on they bought tests of smart Probes and for what they wanted to do with them, they weren't usable and I'm not saying that they weren't usable standalone.

But if you wanted to measure indoors and outdoors at the same time, you couldn't do that and you couldn't really store your readings from inside and go outside and make some adjustments see with even what the readings were. So those are things when in measure quick, because we understand how technicians want to use the tools that were actually able to address and use them that way, and even like with a lot of the Bluetooth connections, you'll notice that measure quick, the tools talk faster. They get more data in they work much more seamlessly. They come in quicker when you first, when you're Parham in we've done a lot on just a hardware management side to actually make it work to work in a way that it's more conducive.

The way guys want to use it in the field when you think about just connect and disconnect I mean that was one of the first things. We were testing the new test out probes with measure quick after that integration happened and thank God test. Oh finally, did that I'm very thankful to them for finally making that happen and then, of course, for to you for working it in there. But it's amazing how much nicer it connects and disconnects automatically versus the smart Ferb's app that was originally shipped.

And it's a good little app, but we always had issues with it need have to restart the app in order to get a new probe to connect and just lots of little issues there. But with measure quick, we weren't experiencing any of that one of her Hut, guys Bobby he's really good with managing the Bluetooth actions and it's interesting when you look at what we're doing, because we're managing not only testo but feel peace and blue flame and red fish. All at the same time, so we have a whole heck of a lot more going on there and fuel piece probes work differently than testo probes work differently than the blue flame work differently than the red fish meter. I mean all of them, even though they're all Bluetooth, Low Energy, they use different methods of communicating and different methods appearing into the application, and we all take all that into account and measure quick and just make the tools work a lot better.

It's definitely not without its challenges, and people ask sometimes why it takes so long to get some of the software out. Well, it's because we're on uncharted ground nobody's ever done this stuff before it takes a lot of not only work to even start it, but then we use it and we got to refine it and make it work the way that we'd want it to work so That it's not cumbersome or clunky or convoluted, because we have enough headaches in our life with technology, let alone bad technology. So we want to make sure that things are so intuitive and measure, quick that you don't have to ask somebody how to use it. It just works the way you think it would work.

That's probably one of the things I think we've done very well is make an application that, for the most part, doesn't require an extensive owner's main you don't even get going in want to take a quick second here in the middle of this podcast. Interrupt it to talk quickly about refrigeration technologies, for fridge tech comm, you can find all their products by going to true tech tools. Comm offer code get schooled, still works for their products. They make great stuff.

So big blue, great product nylon, exon the product when you're assembling flares or threaded fittings on HVAC equipment, some guys like it on their vacuum, rigs vacuum hoses some, don't we still use it? You just got to be careful, you don't want to drop it in the dirt, because it's tough, we'll all stick. Dialogue goes where you put it and it's a very high viscosity product, so it's very thick and dirt will stick in it. So you're gon na want to keep maybe some mineral spirits or alcohol around to wipe it off. If you get a summer, you don't intend, but it does exactly what it's supposed to do, which helps fill in those imperfections when you're assembling together a flare or a pipe threaded connection in a refrigeration circuit, specifically designed for refrigeration, and I can use it on water Or anything else, but for refrigeration circuit, I've never found anything better than my log and then also all their Viper products.

The wet rag product that helps protect components, while braising you're going to get a chance to check. And when you go to the a HR conference, which I hope you are that is the HR Expo, I should say in Atlanta - and I'm gon na - be there on Monday at the booth. The booth for refrigeration technologies is B 4417, which is really close to some other booths. I'm gon na be at I'm going to be spending a lot of time.

It's a solder well booth, which is be 45 79, a key tools, booth, which is blue vac at B, 45, 65, so they're, all kind of there and B threes, fours and fives as the booths I'm gon na, be at so just hang out on those aisles And we'll get a chance to look at some cool stuff and talk some shop. I guess I should say so. I get a chance to see John Pasteurella from refrigeration technology as you've heard him on the podcast. If you haven't listened to his episode on internal leak, sealants you're gon na want to go back and listen to that he's a really smart guy.

He cares about the industry and I'm very thankful to refrigeration technologies for making such great stuff so come visit us on Monday, the 14th at the HR Expo at their booth be 44:17 all right. Here we go back to Jim. Let's talk a little bit my sorry! I just lost my train of thought there. I had a note there and then that's not what I wanted to say.

Okay, you lost your short bus of thought. I did hi last night. Yes, that's rude! I'm gon na blame this on the kidney stone. That's what this is.

This is a kidney stone in the brain. I think this might be where they come from anyway, which makes a lot of sense. That's just rocks in the brain so so far, you've got the basic refrigerant circuit and the measure quick, app you've got the vacuum side. You've got the electrical side, you've got the gas side, so that's four really very different pieces, and yet we still have guys complaining because they want some other things.

Can you talk a little bit about what your roadmap looks like? What are some things that you're going to be working on moving forward? Oh gosh, our roadmap is ridiculous. It's literally, I think, we've got two years of programming ahead of us pretty easily and part of what drives your roadmap when you're doing software like this is obviously trying to monetize it, because what people don't realize is that piece of software they're using they're getting access To you're talking about a six-figure, well we're well into the seven figures of investment into the measure. Quick platform and we've been doing this for two years now and if anybody's ever gone out and priced an app just like a very simple app like. If you wanted to do a super heat calculator, app that might cost you in a neighborhood fifty to seventy-five thousand dollars just to do put on all the different refrigerants and you put in a line temperature and it would calculate a superheat.

Let's say that type of an application - that's range you're, looking at typically for that, and then you'd pay a maintenance fee on top of that, and when you look at what we're doing in measure quick, it's not only superheat subcooling and performance, we're looking at EER and What connect layton capacity, sensible capacity, the Diagnostics, all the different tools that tie into the toolbox, the reporting and sitting at reporting to somebody's cloud and the educational sections of that, and then the geo-tagging and the barcode scanning and all the elements in there I mean you Think about like a barcode scanner might be a single app. A super heat calculator might be a single app when you look at all these individual tools. There's a test of smart probes, app, there's a field piece, job link, app, there's the active tools, blue vac, app and all those are individual apps. But you get all those components of those applications and all the tool management's are built into the Metro platform.

So we're building this thing out a lot of what drives the development is. How can we monetize this thing because we're going to get to the point eventually when we're going to want to capitalize on some of our investment and one of the things that I want to assure you and everybody else out there use measure quick, is what you Have free today will be free tomorrow, our game plan is not to get everybody use a measure quick to turn around and charge them for using services. I've been a teacher for 12 years, and this is what I consider what measure quick? Is it's really the fundamentals? This is just like if you want to connect your tools and calculate your system capacity with measure quick. I don't really think you should have to pay for that.

If you want to generate a basic report, hey go ahead and generate a basic report where we're gon na offer some services and once on our development roadmap on that short term, is to offer a data storage so that you can store all the information about that System in the cloud anybody, your company can pull it down and use it not only that, but the benchmark, meaning how their piece of equipment supposed to run. So if your lead tech goes out there in commissions the system - and he gets everything set up the way you want, it gets the air flows right, the superheat right, the subcooling right and its spot on the way you want it and your youngest tech comes out And he downloads that benchmarks in the cloud he's going to have the exact same set of assumptions about that piece of equipment. How supposed to operate as lead tech does right. So it's about making that information accessible and then being able to take a measurement in the field, all the measurements and stream that data to somebody else to support it like maybe an OEM is going to want to be able to view the data of a system.

That's actually operating in real-time remotely right. We call third-party quality control so that it gives everybody the opportunity to share data and help assist with proper commissioning and proper setup and diagnostics and troubleshooting, and things like that. It might be so that we can document certain things are done properly, but right now we've got the cooling side electrical side, the vacuum side, the gas heating side, we're wrapping up heat pumps in the heating mode. We've got some really cool plans for that to do charging if everything works right, I'll have a method put in there that you can accurately charge a heat pump in the winter time, which is something that's everybody in the industries wanted to do, but nobody's been able To figure out a good way to do it, I think, between the higher-quality meter we have, and the measure quick app.

I think we're gon na have all the tools to actually make that something that's doable after we get the heat pump and the heating mode thing checked. Probably our next big ones going to be delving into refrigeration. We've had a lot of guys. Looking at the measure.

Quick they're going wow. This is really cool, but it doesn't do what I want to do for refrigeration and we've put in an infrastructure in there to manage all that. But I just haven't dove back into that, because the bulk of our users are residential light commercial technicians and you look at like refrigeration I'd, say it's a much smaller swath of our industry than it is residential equipment by far no less important. It's just a matter of when were looking at opportunities.

The residential side is really where one of the biggest opportunities buys, because the technicians that are not trained as well and can really benefit from software like measure quick, where a refrigeration guy, it's more about documenting things, were done right, documenting the temperatures, the pressures everything was Done right he's going to use it more as a documentation tool. I think residential technicians use it more as a diagnostic tool, so it just depends, but I think those are some of the things we're doing. Obviously, geothermal is on our roadmap. We're building out the electrical section in the Tecla cap for sup Co.

I want to do a lot more in the electrical diagnostic side and then on the blue vac cap we're doing multiple gauge support and then, after I went out with Andrew Greaves, and we did that large chiller. We really found we needed to make some improvements in the application for commerce just realized in vacuum, so we need to be able to adjust the data log frequency so because at 24 hours we're at bazillion points of data way more data than we needed. So we need to be able to adjust that for a longer data logging times and just make the app work. Multiple gauge supports another one we want to do so.

We can be measuring vacuum at the pump and vacuum in the system and just comparing those to the vacuum at each gauge, comparing them because there's some cool stuff there, we can do with the rate of pull down and things like that. We're gon na be looking at and then there's a whole project management side. What people don't realize when they look at measure quick, is a lot of times is how we anticipate they're going to use it. One of the things that we try to do with measure quick is everything we do in the HVAC industry should really be either project or process focused, in other words, we're there to do something specific, and what we really designed it to do is to Commission equipment.

The commissioning means to take a new piece of equipment getting operating to some type of a standard. So usually it's a manufacturer standard of operation or we're going to get commissioned to the design if we're doing a loss. Calculation in Orleans, late and sensible split right whatever. That is it's a process that we're going through and gas heating is a process.

So let's take gas heating, for example, when you start a project in measure quick, you know whoever using measure quick. You turn it on down at the bottom. There's a button called projects and when we click on a project, then we need to pick. Are we doing a gas furnace test and air conditioning test and non-evasive test? What are you going to use a software for? So when you click on that gas furnace, you hit continue on there.

It's going to walk you into a process, so you're going to see, notes about the project, job site, information, equipment, information, assistant profile and then measurements. The thing that you got to understand here is why we're doing some of the things that we're doing so project notes. This is for what we're calling future proofing our products. So this is so that the dispatcher at the office can put some notes in about the project so you're going out there.

This is a new startup new installation. They want you to set some up a certain way or they want to tell you don't let the cat out of the door whatever it is. That's what that project notes section is about the job site. Section is about filling in information about.

Where are you at who's the primary contact at that place? What address are you at just information about the job site itself, but then we get into equipment information. Here's where the rubber meets Road with measure quick, because we need to understand and measure quick what you're working on. So we can help you properly, set it up and diagnose it, because if you're gon na work on a 70 % efficient furnace on old standing, pile with four cells on and it's gon na be a whole lot different than a 90 plus full modulation furnace. So we need to know: was it single stages of multi stages at 90 plus is 70 for us? What is it that you're actually working on? What is it propane? There's at natural gas, all this information about the equipment? What's the input, how many BTUs have input? What's the rated external static pressure, because if we don't know what that information is, then we can't tell you if you're in the right ranges or not so there's this whole profiling section and profiling is just telling me exactly what you're working on and after you profile It then we can make measurements, people don't realize how important it is.

Sometimes we skip this whole taking a few minutes, I'm looking at the equipment understand what you have and they go right to the measurement section in there and that's really not the way. The tool was intended to be used because if you want to get the most out of the measure quick application, then you got ta walk through the process of actually giving us a little bit information about that system. Then you take your measurements and then you can start diving into the Diagnostics and things like that. So what we're going to be doing here in the near future is information about the job site, about the equipment about the project.

That'll all be stored in the cloud. So that, once that information is put in once, you never have to input that again and so that every technician that comes out is using the same set of assumptions about how that piece of equipment should operate and what the target super. He should be. What the target airflow should be, what the target subcooling should be, what type of a system it is so that they can actually start using the measure, quick measurements and diagnostic section right away instead of entering details and information about the system, because what we found out Early on was that fat fingering in large amounts of information on a smartphone like model numbers and serial numbers and customer names, and addresses it's just time to create medium to do that on so we're building that out on a desktop application so that you can have Somebody at the office that actually has a full-size PC and a keyboard they could type at a hundred words for men.

Put that information in for you, so that you're not trying to do it on your smartphone on the job site and that when you're, looking at what we're building out and how it's going to be used in the near future. Those are the big changes. You're going to see, but in using the software, realize that this is project or process based and you're gon na see very shortly. We're gon na have a dashboard in there.

That's gon na allow for some processes to be done like clocking. The meter might be a separate process or we're doing some duct leakage. Testing that'll be a separate process, so there'll be some standalone processes in the measure, quick application, it might even be access to other apps. So you might want to do electrical Diagnostics and you'll be able to access that open the stuff go Tecla camp right through measure, quick or open up the blue vac app right from measure quick, because we do to do some app tap communication to and there's, but The idea is once you're a measure quick, you can do all your testing and measure quick.

You can pull information from other apps back into measure quick and then it becomes your measurement operating system where all that data can be managed and used. That's where we're really trying to go with this product and that's one of the things I don't think everybody understands, sometimes when they're using it yeah it's an area that even I sometimes challenged with, because when I first get an app in my hands. I just want to use it real, quick and I just want to see how it works and use it and building it into a business process takes a little bit more time a little bit more commitment to make that happen, and I think eventually that will happen. I'll give a perfect example in the commercial world, and anybody who works in my commercial has heard a service channel, and that was a fairly small management product that was out there five years ago, as one of many and now they've just taken over, because it just Become the best option for like commercial customers to manage their sites and for entry of when technicians are on job sites and readings, and all that sort of thing like she's, not really so much on the reading side, but we're just on the management side from the Expenses and all that, but over time that just takes over - and I think measure clicks gon na build up that steam as businesses start to use it as a core piece of their business, which I'm sure is a big part of the long-term monetization strategy.

Anyway. Yeah and it's we're working on integration with service Titans on a road map is one of the things we want to do. We want to stay in the test and measurement side of the business. We don't want to get into into the customer CRM side.

We don't want to get into the fleet management side. We want to focus on specifically on what were really good at which is tighten the bluetooth tools, aggregating the data validating the measurements and reporting results back to the interests of party. I mean that's really at the core of what measure quick does and that's what we're really good at and that's what we want to focus on. So we have noticed it's like when you look at what companies like service Titan or what they're doing on the server side.

Why would you even want to try and compete with that, because it's such an immense, powerful program and once a company commits to a framework like that you're not going to get them off of it, so you may as well figure out how to integrate these things Together, I think that's what we're starting to see a little bit more of as less standalone solutions and more that allow for integration of other products and that's where we're sort of on the cutting edge on that. Actually, we are seeing it right now I mean sub. Co is not in the app business because they don't want to be in the app business. They want to be in the tool business.

So they're focusing on developing more Bluetooth tools, they're actually coming out with a new vacuum gauge. Your gauge will see a HR where the new clamp meter. We have the redfish meter, they have other things in their development roadmap. Their team is working on, but we're doing all the software for that same thing with a key tools.

Core tools didn't want to be involved in app development. They don't want to support apps. They don't even know how to do apps so Dennis equipping all his tools with Bluetooth. Radios was a natural fit and allowed him to come into the Bluetooth world without having to focus on application, development and we've seen.

On the other hand, companies that do do apps, but they don't do what their customers want them to do and again we're able to address that and measure quick, because we're a small company we're able to design what the industry needs we're able to pivot and decide When we're gon na add new features in there and we don't have to go through a hierarchy of on a chain of command to get stuff done. If we want to do it, we just do it. That's been really cool, so we're seeing more and more of those things happen. I think we're gon na continue to see them in the future.

I think it's really real cool time to be in this industry, because I think we're seeing things really for the first time in our lifetime, and I don't know that we're gon na see this type of a boon and technology again that we're seeing today. I think it's a really really cool time to be in the industry, because, if you think about it, like we went from all analog to to digital and think about this to go 20 years, the fact there's still more analog gauges out in our market than Ern's Digital but I'd say: there's we have people. At least everybody is looking that the buys ascetic ages today make some looks at the digital's and the digital Tsar getting to the cost point where it doesn't make much sense to even buy an analogue exciting for a few dollars more. You can buy it Senate éstos or feel peace, smart probes or feel peace.

Joblink probes, whatever you're gon na, want to use we're seeing this time where the electronic options are dropping, it cost they're getting much better they're allowing us to look at things in a whole. New way, then, we've ever looked at them before it's allowing us to accelerate the way that we're doing things, that's just a cool time to be in the industry. So I'm really looking forward to what the next couple of years are gon na bring. But I just don't see anything but a deeper and deeper integrated solution that really covers more breadth of what the industry needs it to cover.

So I got my hands on the new redfish clamp, which you graciously sent me, and it's a really nice meter for a lot of different reasons. The power quality side is great. The way that the display was laid out in the way that it works with the app is excellent, just everything was well thought out when is that meteor gon na hit the market, so those are being manufactured right now and they'll hit the market probably towards the Beginning of February's, what if I had to guess when we'll see those actually hit the market, we're wrapping up packaging and stuff like that right now on the meters, and then we have a little bit more integration on the integration side like we're going to do some. My capacitor and our load test what we found a lot of clamp meters do not have the accuracy where the resolution you need to actually to do a cap test so to do it on a live cap test.

We're testing it under load and the red fish is really really good for that, because it'll read down to one or two milliamps. Obviously the voltage is there and so we'll be doing some tests like that built in and we're looking at some other things. We can do with EE our efficiency and sear, and things like that as well on the meter and other features want to tie in, but we'll see that all hit around February we're wrapping up the app side now and then we're also going to integrate it in With measure quick pretty quickly too so we can do the pull and those power measurements into the metric framework, all right, very cool. So I'm gon na recommend to all of you - and I've said this before, but I work with companies that are doing good things for the industry, they're good for technicians, Jim is definitely on the top of that list.

I've always looked for those types of businesses and I think, supporting field piece and testo for stepping up and integrating with measure quick. I think remember them. Remember the fact that a cue tools and blue vac has worked with Jim. Take a look at those products.

They're really tremendous and then, when something new comes out into the market, give it a shot. I think you're gon na really like the new meter.