RT 2.5.1-alpha Released

Software
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For anyone interested, I just spotted RT 2.5.1-apha on GitHub. Thank you Matt.

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Finally had the critical combination this morning: itā€™s cool and Iā€™m awake. Got the Bullet setup and started pre-heating. The first thing I noticed is the IR Bean Temp in the upper right box has been truncated from XXX.XX to XXX.X. That means no jitter. Thank you Matt!!

Now letā€™s see whatā€™s hidden away in RT 2.5.1-alpha. Btw, Iā€™m using f/w 523 and I notice I regularly have entries in the Error Log:

[{ā€œcodeā€:28674,ā€œvalueā€:1},{ā€œcodeā€:28672,ā€œvalueā€:57671},{ā€œcodeā€:28673,ā€œvalueā€:40564}]

Is this the ā€˜new normalā€™? or am I dealing with a genuine error?

Bruce

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Just finished a 3-roast session with RT 2.5.1-alpha on my Win 10 laptop and Iā€™m feeling pretty good about this release. Keep in mind I havenā€™t tried Recipes, but the things I whined about (excluding pre-filling the roast info) have been addressed and seem to be working in a usable way.

  • the jittery screen caused by the IR Bean Temp going between xxx.xx and xxx.x (or xxx) has been fixed! Matt changed IBTS resolution to xxx.x and that stabilized the display. No more distraction as the screen jumped.

  • I found the color presets for temperature curves to be very workable (though apparently things arenā€™t quite right on the Mac).

  • the audible nag that requires the operator to hit the A-button is still gone. Good riddance! It was a real distraction to have to shift focus to the control panel right as youā€™re about to dump the roast.

  • still no action on pre-filling the roast info form. Itā€™s my impression that may not happen for awhile.

  • there is now an error log each time I start. Cycling power didnā€™t change it. The roaster has cooled off now, so just to be sure I have it right I tried it again and (you knew this would happen, right?) no errors! The log I had in the previous post is copied again here. Guess I need to know what I have going on:

  • the RT startup screen has an ā€˜adjustmentā€™ icon under Roasts (far right) that pops up a box where you can set some parameters, but itā€™s a white box with no border on a white background and I canā€™t make sense of it as the text overlays the underlying roast info. Need a contrasting color for the box e.g. lt-grey or lt-yellow or maybe a border would do the trick.

  • I would tackle the Recipe option but I need some instructions/guidance.

Iā€™m pretty happy with RT 2.5.1-alpha as a baseline assuming the Error Log Iā€™m getting isnā€™t related to the s/w. Need-

  • some feedback about my Error Log.
  • instructions on Recipes (I may well have missed it on Roast.World).

Thanks for this update!

Bruce

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Hi Bruce,

Thanks for your information.
These are not actual errors but information about what kind of setting your bullet has and they help us with bug fixes.

The pre filling of roast info will come at a later stage.

We donā€™t have a manual for the recipes yet, but I think Eli made it so easy to use that it should be pretty self explanatory. Have a go at it and if there is something not logical we would love to hear about it.

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Hi Jacob-

re: Error Logā€¦ so I donā€™t have to worry about it? I was hoping that was the case. But then I have to ask what to think about having an empty Error Logā€¦ ??

re: roast info laterā€¦ that was my impression. Thanks for confirming.

re: Recipesā€¦ I think you have more confidence in me than I do, but Iā€™ll give it a shot. :slight_smile:

Bruce

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Well the name error log is a bit confusing I agreeā€¦maybe we will change it to just log or something similar.
I have a lot of confidence in you Bruce :slight_smile:

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If itā€™s more like a configuration log, maybe Config Log ?

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Uh-ohā€¦ the pressureā€™s on! :slight_smile:

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Just noticed an additional feature in RT 2.5.1-alpha-

  • You can now Copy Roast ID to the clipboard. That should help with multiple roasts of the same coffee as you can then insert/paste that info into the next roast header.

Missed it when I first tried this version and now wish I had spotted it while I was roasting an hour ago. I think it means we can go to any roast in our library and copy the ID at any time then insert that data into any other existing roast, new or archived. Doesnā€™t negate the need for pre-entering roast info for the next roast, but it certainly makes it easier to log the title while the roaster is pre-heating for the next batch.

Bruce

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Just finished a 2nd roast session with RT 2.5.1-alpha with no drama, no annoying anything. Went just fine. I really think the nuts-and-bolts of RT look usable at this point. Yes there are improvements several have asked for, but this version seems able to get thru a roast without distractions.

On the first roast I noticed that IR Fan Speed (info panel) was initially below 7,xxx RPM and I felt a twinge of panic. As the first roast was finishing I noticed IR Fan RPM was up around 15,xxx RPM. So am I right that IR Fan Speed is variable based on some f/w managed criteria?

And no I havenā€™t tried Recipes. I looked it over but Recipes are based upon Bean Temp targets (the thermocouple) and I use IBTS for roasting targets. While I use RoR (derivative of thermocouple-based Bean Temp) for managing Power and Fan because I have to, I have all my targets identified based upon IBTS. Hope there is some compromise coming for less-flexible folks like myself. [ Using T/C-based roasting targets feels like roasting with my HotTop. ]

Bruce

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In recipes it defaults to the regular bean probe for temperature trigger but on my RT there is a radio button to select IBTSā€¦

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Thanks Stuart. Iā€™m embarrassed I missed that! I guess I clicked on Select Your Trigger and saw a choice of Bean Temp Trigger or Time Trigger not knowing I could choose the source for Bean Temp Trigger. The easy way out is to say ā€œBean Temp is from the t/c probeā€, but I didnā€™t even click on Bean Temp Trigger so I could see there was a choice of measurement source. Mea culpa!
More playing to do tomorrow.

Couple questions-

  • How is the temp measurement handled- Is the condition satisfied only with Equal-to? Are Greater-than or Less-than implemented?
  • Does the trigger test dwell at that point till either condition (Time or Temp) is met? Trying to meet both simultaneously seems impossible.
  • This looks like an IF/THEN conditional. Is there an ELSE as well? At one point I thought I came across that but I canā€™t find it now.

Thanks-

Bruce

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Hey Bruce

So at first I was confused by the time AND temperature but itā€™s not as mind bending as would seem. I set the time at say 10sec so as long as the roast is 10 sec in, it will trigger at that temperature or greater. Iā€™ve been told this is to allow you to ensure the temp trigger is where you expect to need it, not for example to be falsely triggered in turning point or similar.

Iā€™ve actually just started playing with this and Iā€™ve had an odd case or two where a trigger didnā€™t happen but I just manually intervened. Iā€™d say it was 95% on point at least. Iā€™m still not sure if you need to specify all the parameters even though only fan speed was changed. In older versions I found that for example if I only stated step was to change Fan, Power would end up being set to P0. Not sure if that was a bug or me misunderstanding the ā€œsyntaxā€. I would prefer an option to change the preheat when starting a recipe, but thatā€™s a small niggle.

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Iā€™ll need to go thru this tomorrow. Not sure which version of RT youā€™re using, but in my 2.5.1-alpha Win-10 version the first step (before setting any triggers) is to set the Pre-heat (itā€™s pre-set to 230Ā°F along with P6/D8/F2). Do we have the same version of RTā€¦ ??

More tomorrow.

Bruce

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Yes itā€™s the first step in the recipe but when you run the recipe Iā€™d like an option to change it then without editing and saving the recipe, if you get my drift. For a batch size change or other bean, I might want to tinker with the charge temp leaving other triggers alone. It would also be nice to duplicate a recipe :+1:

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Yeah I agree, we should make a duplicate function so you can easily make different recipes with slight modifications.

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re: Pre-heatā€¦ Ok, understand what you mean.

Along the same line, when roasting with a Recipe, can you alter P/D/F settings directly without being thrown out of the Recipe? or perhaps confusing the Recipe function? Itā€™s the sort of issue that would come up roasting outdoors.

Bruce

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AFAIK yes, you can still manually input during a recipe but the next trigger will still take effect, so if you turn down the heat from P8 to P6 and then the next trigger is a P8->P7, youā€™ll see it go to P7 taking over from your manual P6

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Thanks Stuart. Hope youā€™re right. That was a gripe with HotTopā€™s built-in programming: any change to say fan speed caused the program to stop adjusting fan speed for the duration of the roast. I migrated to Artisan without really getting the 3 internal profiles working satisfactorily. Mmmā€¦ thinking about, I believe it was an issue with Artisan too.

The RT approach (Recipes) is still a little bit of a mystery that wonā€™t get solved till I do the work.

Bruce

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I also think a delete recipe would be a good idea for prolific if flawed cooks :wink: