Artisan 0.6

It took a moment, but now it is released:
Artisan v0.6 for Windows, OS X and Linux

Developing this version was a very exciting experience, because of all the enthusiastic support we received over the last year. We would like to thank especially the following people.

Device Selection

There are a number of devices to monitor or control your roaster that are supported by Artisan. Which one to choose? Let's look at the key features of the available choices.

Monitoring a Londinium

The Londinium blog recently featured a box full of Amprobe TMD-56's ready to start a series of measurements on this machine that has been a bit of a rave recently. The guys at HG-One like it a lot, for instance.

Fighting Spikes

You might be one of the lucky roasters who gets perfect readings from your meter. However, some don't. Mostly spikes are caused by some electrical interferences between the temperature probe, meter or Computer. In the ideal word those should be resolved by an improved hardware setup. A nice description of the issue and a documentation towards its solution was recently posted to the HomeBarista forum and also a newer post details on a solution. However, in some cases a physical solution is not possible for various reasons. In those cases the new spike removal features of Artisan might help you out.

More Modbus

The support of Modbus RTU was just added to Artisan (see this previous post), but it is already time to extend its scope based on your requests. This extension of the Modbus support allows Artisan to talk to more device including some build into commercial roasters.

Alarms

Sometimes it is hard to get up in the morning. Alarm clocks may help with this. The Artisan alarms feature instead can help you in keeping the focus while roasting. There are triggers and actions. So assuming we would like Artisan to show a popup once the BT (bean temperature) raises beyond 180C, reminding us to turn down the heat on approaching FCs (First Crack Start). Here BT raises beyond 180C is the trigger and showing a popup is the action.

Modbus RTU

Artisan v0.6 adds a new device call MODBUS. Selecting that one allows you to have Artisan talk to your Modbus RTU device. Modbus is a de facto standard serial communication protocol connecting industrial electronic devices. Artisan supports the RTU (Remote Terminal Unit) variant and plays the role of the supervisory computer, while the connected devices have to be the slaves. Interesting devices for us are variable-frequency drive controllers that allow to control the speed of your drum and fans as well as PID controllers. But there are also temperature meters that provide a Modbus link.

Events, Buttons and Palettes

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.

Controlling a Hottop

Thanks to the genius work of Jim it is now possible to control the heater and fan of a Hottop roaster from your PC. Jim designed the HT Roaster Interface, an electronic device. It is available as Arduino-compatible shield that may be piggybacked on a TC4C board and can take over the control of the connected Hottop. It takes serial commands send from a computer to the Arduino micro-controller and sets the heater power and fan speed accordingly. If it receives the string "OT1,75" it sets the heater to 75% and if it receives the string "IO3,21" it sets the fan speed to 21%.

Artisan 0.6 beta

Last November we released Artisan v0.5.6 that only added a minor fix for the Voltcraft K201 meter over Artisan v0.5.5, which is available already since September 2011. The development of Artisan seems to have stopped. Not true!