Artisan v1.2 is a major release. The software on which Artisan is built was significantly modernised, especially on the Windows platform, resulting in better support of the current operating systems and hardware (e.g. high-resolution displays). A consequence of this move is that from now on, only 64bit operating systems are supported and compatibility with Windows XP and OS X before v10.10 has been dropped. Find below a description of the major changes and new features.
Thank You!
First and foremost I'd like to thank my excellent team. There is Dario Ernst who took over the hosting of the Artisan mailing list from Lukas Kolbe who took care of this from the very beginning in 2011. There is Moshe who donated a Windows 8 licence that enabled me to finally provide builds for modern Windows versions. Then there are those that contributed code. Rob Gardner, Andreas Bader (who managed to provide a last-minute pull request adding support for another Voltcraft device), and finally Dave Baxter who contributed so many new features to this release that I promoted him to a co-author. Then there is a list of users that provided me with valuable ideas, comments, hints and bug reports. Thanks Frans, Brad, Rick, Moshe, Rob, Dave and all the others.
Donations
The Artisan project runs on donations from individuals and companies recognizing the value of Artisan for their work or leisure.
Jaroslav from doubleshot enabled the implementation of the re-roast by temperature feature (see below) that he invented together with Scott Rao. Chester and Brian from Phidgets.com donated some of their excellent hardware to ease the reimplementation of the Phidgets support in Artisan (see More Phidgets!). Michael from Hottop supported the project financially and in return we added a one-click configuration for the users of their machines. Finally, Randy from Buckeyecoffe contributed a significant amount of money on behalf of his customers who love to use Artisan in combination with his machines.
In addition, the following individuals and small roasting operations from all over the planet (in no specific order) decided to support the development of this version with their donation: Josef (Kuntravant), Gary, Assaf, Gurtekin, Tom, Tije, Michael, Anton, David, Bethells, Santa Fara Caffe, Frans (kostverlorenvaart.nl), Nicolas, Chow, Radu (Madison), Charles, Matthias, Moon Doggie, Erik, Hans-Peter, Steven, Michael, 25 Group LLC, Bo (Holy Bean), Nicolas (Marvell Street Coffee), Tolga (OneTake), Ulrich (Grandoro), Vladimir, David, Paggnini, Encore Coffee Company, Claus, Mikel (Mikels Kaffeverksted), Uwe, Jörg, Bitter & Real, Casual Coffee Roasters, Uwe, Casino Mocca, Suksit, Steffen, Rob, Beautiful Bean, Dmitry, Kasper, Matthias, Jasper, Tadej, and James.
We thank you all!
In case you enjoy Artisan v1.2, please contribute with your donation to the next version of Artisan. Thank you!
Downloads
Major Changes and Extensions
Besides the update of the software infrastructure of Artisan, a number of major changes and additions have been applied to this version. See the Detailed Release History for the full list of changes.
DropOuts Handling
On communication issues, Artisan used to substitute the wrong reading by -1 indicating an error in the data set. This is still done by Artisan v1.2 which still stores all readings it received during a roast within its .alog profile. However, those error values are no longer rendered in the graph and instead the missing values are interpolated based on the good ones. This results in cleaner roast profiles undisturbed by intermediate hick-ups.
RoR Alignment
The handling of the rate-of-rise (RoR) of the environmental (ET) and bean temperatures (BT), called DeltaET and DeltaBT in Artisan, has been improved. Artisan still applies two different algorithms. One during offline viewing of profiles that is optimal in the sense that it does not suffer from any time shifting, and another one computed online during a roast that is shifted to the left on the x-axis depending on the amount of smoothing applied. The time-shift in the online variant is theoretically not avoidable, but disturbing if one wants to follow the RoR of a previous profile loaded in the background that was rendered with the optimal algorithm without any time-shifting. Artisan v1.2 is now rendering also applying the non-optimal RoR computation to background profiles during the recording of a new profile, to make both, the foreground and the background RoR curves easier to compare.
Event Replay by Temperature
The replay of events functionality that allows to duplicate roasts by replaying events at the same moment in time they occurred in a background template profile, got extended by the possibility to alternatively replay those events the moment the same temperature (BT or ET) is reached. That way, the replay of events dynamically adjusts to small changes in batch size, environmental or pre-heat temperatures. To activate this feature, tick the Playback Events flag in the Background dialog (menu Roast >> Background) and choose between by time, by ET, and by BT. Thanks to Jaroslav from doubleshot and Scott Rao for the idea!
PDF Profiles
A new flag Save PDF also has been added to the Autosave dialog (menu Config >> Autosave). Once ticked, Artisan will always generate and save a PDF version of the profile along the .alog file.
Device Support
A simple setup menu to configure Artisan with the fully controllable Hottop 2K+. Just the serial port has to be selected from the popup (while the roaster is connected via USB!). This simplifies the setup of this machine dramatically!
Two new Voltcraft temperature meters (the two channel PL-125-T2 and the four channel PL-125-T4). Thanks Andreas!
The Phidgets support has been completely revised, now adding support for the latest Phidgets driver v22, dropping support for the now outdated driver v21. Support for a number of additional Phidgets has been added. See More Phidgets! for all the details.
User Interface Improvements
Inherited from the update underlying software infrastructure, modern hard- and software (such as high-resolution displays) is now better supported, especially on Windows, with the consequence that UI elements like buttons and text are more readable.
A new click-measurement tool has been added by Dave. Activate the cross-lines by pressing the key t once and then click onto the graph to place the start point and drag while holding the mouse button. Deltas to between the current position and the start point are reported in the message line. To deactivate the cross-lines press the key t again.
A green MET marker (maximum ET) can now be placed on the graph (menu Config >> Events, Mark MET). A click on the mark reveals some details in the message line.
Statistic Summaries can be rendered next to the profile (menu Config >> Statistics, Summary).
Ranking reports (menu File >> Report >> Ranking) have been extended by a widget that allows to easily compare roast phases, inspired by the beautiful Roast Analysis renderings by The Crown – Royal Coffee.
Many improvements have been applied also to the Wheel Graph tool (menu Tools >> Wheel Graph). See Spider Wheels for details.
That's it!
Marko
