Artisan v1.2

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.

Roasting with Phidgets

An introduction to automatic roast logging using basic hardware from Phidgets in combination with Artisan. This article focuses on standard USB Phidgets that have been supported by Artisan since 2013. The follow-up post More on Phidgets! describes the extended Phidgets support by Artisan v1.2 covering also the new VINT devices that were introduced at the end of 2017 by Phidgets.

More Phidgets!

Artisan supported hardware from Phidgets since 2013 (see my previous post on Roasting with Phidgets). This year Phidgets fundamentally revised both their hardware and software offerings. With the release of Artisan version 1.2 support for many of the new VINT devices as well as for the new Phidgets v22 driver has been added.

Talking Alarms

As conversational user interfaces are becoming trendy with Siri and Alexa, roast masters soon might start to talk to their roasting equipment, instead of pressing buttons in the classical way to control the process. A first step in that direction is to teach Artisan how to talk.

Spiders Wheels

In development and production it can become essential to not only document exactly the way a roast session was conducted, but also its outcome. Artisan offers a number of tools to collect data of roasting sessions like temperature developments over time and occurrence of key events.

Profile Templates

Once a convincing roast profile for a certain coffee and purpose is found, a roastmaster has to replicate it over and over to produce a consistent product. Artisan offers a list of tools to support the roastmaster on this.

Automatic Save

Did you know that you can instruct Artisan to save roast profiles automatically such that none can get lost? In combination with automatic batch numbering and batch reports, Autosave is a powerful tool to document your production.

More On Digital Noise

In my previous post on Digital Noise I demonstrated that a low temperature resolution produces a noisy rate-of-rise (RoR) curve. Here I hint on a simple way to get a less noisy RoR signal on systems with limited temperature resolution. Just increasing your sampling interval.

Digital Noise

This small note argues that temperature resolution matters even if it transports mostly noise. Continued in the post More On Digital Noise.

Probat Probatone: Adding ET

The first generations of the Probat Probatone 2, the ones without touch display as well as those with the small touch display, came with a bean temperature (BT) probe only. Now that Artisan can be connected directly to those machines to read the BT and to control the burner level, only a simple way to additionally log the environmental temperature (ET) from an additional probe fitted to the exhaust is missing. Just adding a simple electronic device to this setup and a small configuration can easily achieve this.

Probat Probatone

Probat is opening up to 3rd-party roasting software. The Artisan team is proud to be picked as one of their first collaborations. Thus, in the last weeks we worked together with Probat engineers to establish the connection between Artisan and their Probat Probatone roasting machines.

Recent Roasts Properties

Remember that day when you had to roast 100Kg of that Colombian bean on your 5Kg machine? You might have become tired re-entering all the same roast properties over and over again to document your roasts. A new feature in Artisan v1.1 allows you to store and recall up to 25 recent roast properties.

Artisan v1.0

After a long journey that started at the end of 2009, the development of Artisan finally reached version 1.0. Download it from the Artisan GitHub page. This one introduces only a few new features w.r.t. the previous one, but adds some small improvements and bug fixes. For the full list of changes and additions see the Artisan change log.

Roast Phases, Statistics and Phases LCDs

The coffee roasting process is often discussed with respect to its separate roasting phases. Splitting not only makes it easier to get complex things into our small heads, but also allows for colourful roasting graphs.

Giesen Roaster Connected

A number of people have asked how best to connect their Giesen coffee roasters to Artisan. Here is a quite elegant solution by Barry that brings his Giesen onto the network for remote access. He owns a 2016 Giesen W6A propane drum roaster, which is equipped with the dual probe options by the factory. So it has a PT100 dual probe measuring environmental temperature (ET) as well as another PT100 dual probe measuring bean temperature (BT). For each of those probes, one channel (pair of wires) is connected to the Giesen control panel. In the following Barry shows how to connect the second channel (pair of wire) of each probe to some magic, such that Artisan can log its readings over the network.

by Barry Randall

Note: since Artisan v1.3 Giesen roasters are supported directly via their network connection.

Connecting Phidgets on Linux

To get up and running Artisan under Linux using Phidgets is not completely trivial (but doable). While the installation of Artisan should not pose any problem if the installation instructions are followed, getting Artisan to read data from connected Phidgets needs some preparation.