Artisan focus on logging your roasts. It plots temperature curves using data from a meter or manual input (using this magic device NONE). However, a roast profile is not only about temperature and time. There are important events happening during roasting that are useful to compare profiles. Between CHARGE and DROP there is the turning point (TP) where the bean temperature starts rising again after the initial temperature drop caused by inserting the cold beans. Others key events of a roast are the end of the drying phase (DE), the begin and end of the first and second crack, abbreviated as FCs, FCe, SCs, SCe. These key events can be recorded by pressing the corresponding buttons during the roast.
Cool! However, you might want to log also the moment you increased the power of the heater or closed the damper. For this, Artisan offers 4 extra event types that can be freely named and recorded during a roast. Say you want to record the modifications to the fan speed during the roast, you would open the Events dialog (via the Config/Events menu), name one of the event types "Fan" and add a custom buttons in the Buttons tab. Those buttons should be assigned a speaking name (let's say "FAN20" and "FAN80"), the correct event type selected (Fan in this case) and potentially a value. Buttons can also send messages to connected devices or call a program. For example, adding the corresponding command in the description field the speed of the fan will be set to the button value on button press.
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| Events Dialog |
Once setup, those button are shown while roasting (press 'b' on your keyboard if they are not visible). Activating an extra event button adds an entry to the events table logging the time, value and type of that event. Recorded events are listed in the Events tab of the Roast Properties and can also be visualized in the graph by choosing "Type" or "Value" in the bars selector (Config tab of the Events dialog). Note that events by value have better performance than events by type or as annotations during sampling because they add no text to the graph.
Recorded events are also be edited from within the Mini Editor during roasts. The Mini Events Editor widget is displayed below the button rows if the corresponding flag in the Events dialog's config tab is ticked.
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| Extra Event Buttons and Mini Events Editor |
You are right that adding a long sequence of buttons to document the speed changes of your fan is cumbersome. Therefore, Artisan v0.6 introduced sliders that follow a similar concept than the buttons and have been described in my previous post. In any case, you might have the need for different configurations of buttons and sliders for different situations. Luckily the button and slider settings can be stored in so called pallets (see the corresponding tab of the Events dialog) and such pallets can be stored to files (just in case).
Both types of events, the standard roast events, like FCs, as well as the custom events can be edited. For the standard roast events only the time point can be changed by either editing its value in the Roast Properties dialog directly or by right-clicking the bean temperature curve (BT) after a roast and selecting the corresponding event from the popup. To delete a standard event completely, just set its time to 00:00. This works for all but for the CHARGE event (obviously). The CHARGE event can be moved by putting negative or positive time values to indicate the left or right move of the curve with respect to its current position. Custom events can be added or deleted by just manipulating the events table in the events tab of the Roast Properties dialog.
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| Point-and-click Event Edit |
Buttons and slider configurations can be stored in and loaded from one of 10 palettes. The "Palettes" tab of the event dialog allows you "Transfer To" and "Restore From" the corresponding configurations to and from the selected palette as well as store all palette data to a file on your disk and reload it. The quickest way to activate the configuration of one palette is by pressing the number keys 0-9, while the main window is active.
Rick published a nice tutorial video on Artisan Events on YouTube.
