Hey everyone, I'm working on a project and I was wondering if anyone can point me to some more high quantity flavor vendors or perhaps even some large lists of known flavors and manufacturers.
Why? Because I'd like to compile the most exhaustive list I can before release my new calculator.
I know, calculators are a dime a dozen but this is the first of 5 phases:
- Develop the most user friendly juice calculator based on real lists of flavors/ingredients.
- Saving/publishing of recipes and allow people to vote and comment on them.
- Inventory management and filtering of recipes based on your inventory.
- Reporting based on most popular recipes, flavors, manufacturers, etc.
- Juice vendor features and functions for inventory tracking/reporting, private recipes, cost calculation of supplies, etc...
In case you're curious, here's the calculator as it stands so far: http://dev.vaporcreator.com/
It looks/works best in chrome (mouse wheel for changing numeric values) but should be fine in most major browsers and scales to browser/device sizes (responsive UI, usable on mobile/tablet devices).
Also, by having a list of known flavors, the calculator already knows if they are pg/vg/other based, etc..
So, if you know of some lists I can scrape, I'd greatly appreciate it. If you'd like to give me some feedback on the calc, I'd love to hear that too.
BTW: I'm currently scraping eCigExpress and Wizard Labs with plans to scrape My Freedom Smokes and Freedom Smoke USA next.
EDIT: Screenshot of a sample recipe: http://i.imgur.com/meAfqw4.png
Have you seen the Juice Talk show? You might get bonus points for ordering the ingredients by volume (better yet allow manual re-ordering) and then keeping a running total volume for people using graduated cylinders. Like:
.--------------------------------------------------------.
| Fuzzy Custard |
+---------------------------------------+--------+-------+
| flavor | volume | total |
+---------------------------------------+--------+-------+
| PG (PG) | 14.88 | 14.88 |
+---------------------------------------+--------+-------+
| VG (VG) | 7.52 | 22.40 |
+---------------------------------------+--------+-------+
| 100 mg/ml Nicotine Base (50/50 PG/VG) | 4.16 | 26.56 |
+---------------------------------------+--------+-------+
| Vanilla Custard (PG) | 4.16 | 30.72 |
+---------------------------------------+--------+-------+
| Juicy Peach (PG) | 0.96 | 31.68 |
+---------------------------------------+--------+-------+
| Butterscotch (PG) | 0.32 | 32.00 |
'---------------------------------------+--------+-------'
It may make for easier math in the end to have the final PG/VG ratio not be a ratio, but a preferred ordering. Instead of saying you want a 70/30 VG/PG mix, say that after you've added all the things you have to add and totaled up the VG/PG/PGA/DW/etc of those... then first add VG to a desired goal if possible, then if there is room left fill it with PG. So the user says VG 100% and you only add VG. If the user says VG 50% PG 100% then you add as much VG as you can until you reach 50% total VG and if there's still room you fill the rest with PG. That's how I do it in my calculator and it stops all that 'no solution available' nonsense.
If you really want to be groundbreaking, separate the actual recipe part (just the flavors) from the mixing part (specifying nicotine base, desired strength, desired ratio, desired volume). Keep the flavor ratios as a percentage of the flavor bundle and a note for recommended percentage of a mix. Your example would be:
Blueberry Extra (TFA) 66.66%
Honeysuckle (TFA) 33.33%
Recommended: 15%
Then the user can pick that flavor and create a bottle at any ratio/strength. (That's not as easy to look at and get a feel for the flavor, but it's easy to change back and forth as long as you keep track of the total flavor percentage). If nothing else have a knob to scale the flavors up/down together.
VG Nicotine 48mg -> 18mg
VG 70%
PG 100%
With an option to adjust the recommended 15% flavoring.
Flavoring 20%
Add a batch size and the program can create a mix.
One of the most annoying things about recipes and calculators is that I rarely want to make the exact same thing that somebody else saved. I have a different base or want some odd nic strength or a different VG/PG ratio. So the user has to basically copy the recipe and change it. And if they want stronger flavor they have to take each flavor and multiply it by 1.5 or something to get a stronger mix of flavor while keeping the same ratio between the flavors. (or adjusting total flavor for high VG mixes).
If you can keep those things separated but easily tied together... a user could pick your 'Blue Honey' flavor, pick one of their saved mixing templates and have their custom mix. Like I'd have a template for 'no-nic 70/30' and if I liked it would just use another '18mg 50/50 1.5x' template to make a bigger bottle. And there could always be a link to the flavor creator's template.
It does look pretty nice. Could use a color indicator on the components to match the graphic. And maybe some tic marks or the percentage in the stacked bars.
I'm a bit torn on online calculators, they all end up seeming too pointy clicky complicated for what they do. My calculator currently goes:
# fuzzy_custard.rec
name 'Fuzzy Custard';
source 'Juice Talk Week 8 -- Chunkmeister and the Greenman';
flav 'Vanilla Custard' => .13;
flav 'Juicy Peach' => .03;
flav 'Butterscotch' => .01;
# juicetalk_std.tmpl
nic 13, 100, pg => .5, vg => .5;
fillto 'vg' => .30;
fillrem 'pg';
# run like this:
$ jcalc -t juicetalk_std -f fuzzy_custard -s 32
And it dumps out that pretty table... The only thing sorta missing is how to handle the evil '2 drops of Foo per 5ml' which I haven't figured out how to handle well.
Thanks for the thorough response, I greatly appreciate it. You have some good ideas that I'll look further into, however, I did want to touch on one specifically. Separation of the "recipe" and the base/target liquid is exactly why I wanted to create this. I whole heatedly agree that a recipe is nothing more than the combination of flavors (and sweeteners, etc.) and the rest is personal preference (vg/pg ratio, etc.) The one thing I'm having trouble with is whether or not it's too advanced for most users. The notion of the recipe being 15% of the liquid, and the flavor being a percentage of the recipe. So I was thinking I have two options.
- Make the calculator work that way and force users into it
- Make an advanced mode.
The overall problem however is when I implement phase 2 (saving/publishing recipes). I keep coming back to #1 being the only option and hope that people will adopt it.
Not sure I quite see your concerns, but I'm a horrible at UX. To me it should just be a radio button or something that toggles between views. And the math/storage is simple if you think of a bundle of flavors also having a scale.
[ 1, [ 'flavor1', .04 ], [ 'flavor2', .12 ] ]
[ .16, [ 'flavor1', .25 ], [ 'flavor2', .75 ] ]
Those are the same: 1(.04)+1(.12) == .16(.25)+.16(.75). It's trivial to change from one to the other and you can tell them apart by either the scale being a 1 or the values summing to 1. The first view makes it easy to tweak individual flavors like everybody is familiar with, the second view makes it easy to adjust the strength of the flavor as a whole in the mix (by adjusting the scale).
This is a great idea! While we were working on the Custom Blend Lab for our website we'd discussed creating a rateable/commentable database for both recipes AND individual flavorings.
You can see the beginning of our admittedly rudimentary efforts here. The project took a backseat to the rigors of starting a small-business, but I still dream about it.
Great to see someone making this happen! Keep up the good work!
Looks nice.
An idea I had would be have a recipe DB with user submitted recipes. All following a certain format. Search by name / ingredient / browse recipes then load into the calc, allow user to put in their base etc and it spits out all the info.
All in one spot. Win.
Edit: I'm an idiot, didn't read your post. :)
If this website allows users to rate and review recipies and flavors, that would be amazing.