We dedicate this release to the constructive ones, the creatives, the makers, the innovators, the open ones, the integrators, the ones that lead us forward to make this a better planet for all of us and put the destructive ones, the duplicators and obstructors to shame.
THANK YOU!
The Artisan project runs on donations from individuals and companies recognising the value of Artisan for their customers, work or leisure. Consider supporting this project with your donation, or even better, purchase an artisan.plus membership!
With a closing thank you to Sweet Maria's for sponsoring the Artisan v2.4.6 release, we welcome Showroom Coffee as sponsor for this release.
As before, we received the biggest support from Buckeye Coffee Roasters (USA). A big thank you from the Artisan community for your ongoing support. Compliment!
In return we offer every customer that purchases a machine from Randy a free 1-year artisan.plus PRO subscription! This offer is valid while Artisan v2.6.0 is the current release.
Besides Buckeye Coffee no other machine manufacture did support this release in a significant way. Again the majority of the costs have been on the shoulders of Marko & Paul who created the artisan.plus service to provide some financial basis for the Artisan project.
The following individuals and operations (in no specific order) did support the development of this version with their donation to cover the remaining 6% of the development costs: Alan Friedman, Raphael Aschmann, Ronaldo Martins. Efraim Eygin, Jim, Тихонов (caffeevita), 王彥元, Ernesto Carlos Bode, Cathy & Ernie (Borrowed Land Farm), 大黒洋 (96cafe Roastery), Khin Men Cheah, Nico Damanik, Ron (VortX), Marc Boer, Matt Keebler, Tawney Buttler, Morgan (Landmark Speciality Coffee Ltd), Robert Denson, Javier Negron, Don Stewart Morgan, Julie Lund, Shannon Conner, William Malatesta, Ron (Tangram Coffee Roasters), Barry Regehr, MOJO FOOD TRUCK LLC, Aleksi Rintanen, Milorad Popadic, Dalton Moody, Kyle Grella, Jon Gutierrez, Darren (Dark Star Coffee Roasters), Matt (Happy Mug Roasters), Dustin (Stout Heart Coffee), Jean-Francois Jutras, Rob (Hoos Coffee Consulting LLC, Jeff Kinzli, Kent (Freeport Coffee Roasting), Sava Vrbaski, Brian McHenry, Josh Greenberg, Kenneth A Fox, Milorad Popadic, Ina Quilling, Eric Gingras, Todd Trebuna, Chip (Radio Roasters LLC), Tomohiro Fukitani, Robert Rings, Daniel Burris, Gemma (Turning Point Coffee), Jane Lau, Thomas Wright, Minuto Coffee, Henrik Haaning, Norman Hardy, Vladimir (Sputnik Roasters), พลกฤษณ์ โสเจยยะ, Masaharu Kuriya, Ondrej Boucek, BeechCreek Coffee Roasters, Peter Budenz, John Tull, Martin (Appalaches Torréfacteur), Eric Totong, and Norman Kuckert.
We would like to thank especially the ones on the growing list of those that are supporting this project regularly: Tom Husband, Michael Kane, David Austin, Steven Kelleher, Philip Sowels, Flint Orr, Frans Goddijn, Manuel (Caffè Terzi), Richard (Free Space Coffee), Adam Glass, Steven Olock, Michel (The Beautiful Bean), Mark (Velvet Sunrise Coffee Roasters), Graham Kennedy, Hermann-Josef Fensky, Paolo (His Majesty the Coffee), Nicolas Bigler, Rick Groszkiewicz, Colin (Iron Mule & Ironside Roasting), Stephen M Egge, and Richard Unger.
Now get active! Contribute ideas, report issues, help to improve the documentation and correct and extent the localizations. If you are short in time, consider to contribute with a donation to enable us to develop a next version.
PLEASE FOLLOW AND TAG US!
Your Artisan team
Dave, Michael and Marko
What's New?
Most changes with regard to previous releases are internal in nature, resulting in improved performance and stability. Other changes are a direct consequence of infrastructure upgrades like the extended platform support. This is the first Artisan version that retires some features, most notable oversampling, the HUD, and Newton projections. In the following we briefly introduce the most important updates. The complete list of additions, changes, fixes and deletions is available as part of the Detailed Release History.
Supported Platforms
The minimal system requirement of the Windows build is now Windows 10 or better, and runs under Windows 11. The Mac build still supports macOS Catalina (10.15) or better, incl. full support of macOS Monterey (12.x), and runs on M1 Macs under Rosetta 2. Native M1 support will be added for later Artisan versions. Linux builds require glibc 2.31 or higher. The Raspberry Pi version is now build for 32bit Bullseye.
Builds for the legacy systems Windows 7/8, macOS High Sierra (10.13) and RPi Bullet are provided as well.
Hardware Support
As with most previous versions, the list of machines setups has been extended, adding configurations for the ARC RTD models, NOR roasting machines, the Kuban Supreme Manual, Caparaó Prime Line, Yoshan EC-500, Atillia gold plus 2022 and Prometheus Ignis machines from Ukraine.
PHIDGETS
We added support for the latest Phidget firmware and the new Phidget HUB0001 both of which offers improved electrical immunity and stability, supported also by some changes we applied to the Artisan Phidget support in this version. Note that the Linux and RPi builds do not include the Phidget driver like previous versions and thus the Phidget driver has to be installed as on all other platforms separately as well-documented by Phidgets. Remember to keep your driver always up to date and update the firmware of your modules using the Phidget Control Panel to their latest versions.
ACAIA
With great development support from our friends at Acaia we added support for their full range of bluetooth scales on platforms supporting the corresponding BLE infrastructure like modern macOS and Windows systems. Besides the already original Pearl and Lunar models, Artisan now supports also the novel Pearl-S, Pearl 2021 and Lunar 2021 scales.
Usability
This version adds a number of small extensions and shortcuts to increase usability and decrease the number of necessary interactions with the software while roasting.
CURSOR WIDGET
We updated the cursor widget which displays the temperature or rate-of-rise (RoR) at the position the mouse cursor points to at the top of the main window. Use the d key to toggle between three states: off, temperature and RoR mode. Press the z key to clamp the temperature or RoR position to the bean temperature (BT) or environmental temperature (ET) signals or their corresponding signals of the background profile.
RUNNING LCDS
Press key u to toggle the running LCDs. While not logging, the readings at the cursors time position are shown in the corresponding readings LCDs on the right side. Make sure Readings is ticked under menu View to make those LCDs visible.
ZOOM FOLLOW ROR
The Automatic Panning mode has been extended to center on the current bean temperature rate-of-rise (RoR) if the cursor widget is set to RoR mode via the d key.
CURVE VISIBILITY BY LCD CLICK
Now you can toggle the visibility of a curve by clicking its corresponding LCD. This works in all modes of operation.
MINI EDITOR
The mini Events Editor is now also available while not recording and can be used to browse and edit custom events of a profile. It an be enabled via the menu entry Events Editor from the View menu or simply by pressing the y key.
PLAYBACK EVENTS
Event Playback can now be toggled by pressing the j key. Active event playback is indicated by rendering the background profile title on the right top of the profile in red.
SPACE TO RECORD
Hitting the space bar in logging mode starts the recording. With the keyboard mode active (press RETURN key to toggle and use the left/right arrow keys to choose the event button and SPACE to activate the selected button), in combination with the Keep ON function (menu Config » Sample), this allows to record a whole roasting session by just using the SPACE key.
CHARGE TIMER
The autoCHARGE feature (menu Config » Events) allows you to have the hands free while charging the bean for the next batch, having the CHARGE event set automatically by Artisan. For those who prefer to set the CHARGE event manually by hitting the CHARGE button we now added the Charge Timer (menu Config » Events) as alternative. If active, the timer counts down the specified seconds after START until it automatically set the CHARGE event. With the Charge Timer set to 0sec, Artisan will set the CHARGE event to the first reading it records.
Enhancements
A number of existing features have been enhanced with new functionality.
COMPARATOR BBP SUPPORT
We extended the Roast Comparator to allow to compare the between batch protocol (BBP) of the selected profiles.
SIMULATOR PAUSE & SPEED CHANGE
We added a pause action to the Roast Simulator. Just click the timer LCD to stop and re-start the simulation. By holding a modifier key while re-starting, you can change the simulator speed (1x: SHIFT, 2x: ALT/OPTION, 4x: CONTROL/COMMAND).
QUADRATIC & ROR PROJECTS
Projection lines in Artisan (menu Config >> Curves, 1st tab) for the bean temperature curve (BT) and the environmental temperature curve (ET) are computed based on the current rate-of-rise (RoR) of the corresponding curve. Artisan draws a straight line from the last measured temperature reading projecting its development under the assumption of a constant RoR.
We added quadratic projections which take the development of the RoR (aka RoRoR) into account, drawn as linear RoR projection lines (no AI involved!).
This results in a more precise prediction of the future temperature development, drawn as quadratic (curved) projection lines. We will see how productive this is, as the RoRoR calculation amplifies signal noise even more than the RoR calculation. Therefore quadratic projection and RoR projection lines are not drawn before 5min into the roast.
SLIDER MAPPING CALCULATOR
Artisan sliders allow to map their event value range (eg. 0-100%) to a different range of output values (eg. 0-4.2V) to be send to external devices on slider changes. The mapping is specified in the slider tab (menu Config >> Sliders, 3rd tab) by specifying a linear mapping using the Factor and Offset parameters. But how to calculate those parameters? We added a Slider Calculator where you only have to enter the minimal and maximal output values and have the correct Factor and Offset being calculated.
PDF REPORTS
We included a Chrome engine to render the HTML reports generated by Artisan to PDF. Now you can save those reports (menu File » Reports) directly as PDF. We also added the PDF Report option to the Autosave feature.
SEAMLESS EXTRA DEVICE HANDLING
In previous versions Artisan asked what to do on loading a profile with a different Extra Device setup. You could choose to either ignore the extra data, resulting in an incomplete representation, or allow your extra device setup to be adjusted, modifying your setup.
Artisan will now make a backup of your extra device setup before loading such profiles and always adjust the setup to fully load any profile. On reset Artisan will revert to your original Extra Device setup using the backup made before.
RoyalCoffee Webinar on Artisan v2.6.0
artisan.plus
Here are the news on artisan.plus, the inventory management system for Artisan.
HOME PRICE DROP & HOME+
SUPPLIER PARTNERSHIP
We started our partnership program with green bean suppliers around the globe. To remove the pain point of having to enter green coffee data manually for each purchase, we decided to link our artisan.plus platform directly to the systems of leading green bean importers. Further, our partners provide coupon codes to artisan.plus subscribers providing them discounts on their green coffee offerings, while helping to streamline inventory management for home roasters and commercial roasters alike.
In combination with the recent price drop for our HOME customers, those partner discounts may offset the subscription costs completely.
Read on: Genuine Origin Joins Artisan Plus Inventory Management Integration (Daily Coffee News)
NOTIFICATIONS & REMINDERS
Artisan is now able to send notifications via the operating system. Notifications are acknowledged with a click. Open notifications are listed at the notification icon. Notifications can be generated by Artisan itself, or by the new Artisan Command notify attached to a custom event button which itself can be triggered by an Artisan alarm. Finally, notifications generated by artisan.plus reminders are forwarded to Artisan as well.
ACAIA SUPPORT
Support for the full range of Acaia scales has been added to artisan.plus as well. Running on browsers supporting WebBT (e.g. Chrome, but not Safari) the Acaia original Pearl and Lunar, Pearl Model S, Pearl and Lunar 2021 as well as the PYXIS scales are directly supported.
CUSTOM BLEND EDITOR
We added a blend editor to Artisan which allows you to quickly define an ad-hoc blend. This is useful for blends that you do not plan to reuse as this avoids having to define a blend on the artisan.plus platform beforehand. If you set the weight to 0 this editor allows you to enter the components by weight instead of ratio, calculating the total weight.
What Else?
WEBINAR @RoyalCoffee (March 11, 2022)
We’ve got invited by Royal Coffee to hold an online workshop on Artisan. In this webinar Dave shows how to access the wealth of information available in Artisan graphs. Whether during an active roast or reviewing a completed roast, Artisan has features to speed your work.
A recording of this session is now available on Vimeo.
NORM ROAST
We are very thankful to ROAST for the opportunity to report on NORM ROAST, an open standard for determining the levels of pollutants, CO2 emissions and energy consumption of small to mid-size batch coffee roasting machines.
This feature article is currently available online with free access.
