hello from france

[icke]

hi there,

great app!

i just 'found' roastmaster a few days ago and used it now for three roasts already. i really like the idea of a db driven application that can manage beans and inventories. not that i every will have huge inventories as a home roaster, but it's great to see what i have and used to have in a single place.

i'm using a huky 500 roaster which comes with two k-type thermocouples pre-installed. these are connected to an electronic thermometer which has a USB interface that i have hooked up to a macbook. for roast logging i have used Artisan now for quite a while. this has helped me a great deal of understanding the roaster and the roast process in general. so the primary differentiator in favor for roastmaster over artisan to me is the db based approach. what i find however sorely missing is the lack of automatic temperature reading. taping temperatures manually into roastmaster is quite a job and especially when things are a bit busy during start and end of a roast.

i guess it's not easy to add such a feature to an iOS based app as the available interfaces on these devices are rather restricted. a networked solution would work fine for me even if i have to use a mac/pc as data 'broadcaster' while roasting.

i tried to view some of the youtube videos that you had posted here in the forum, but youtube reports that the account has been deleted?

and some usage questions: is there a way to view a roast temperature curve as graph instead of node list? and also, can an existing curve be used as target or background profile similar to how artisan displays background profile curves?

thanks,
olaf

[Danny Hall]

Hi Olaf

Thanks for the kind words - glad you're liking it!

is there a way to view a roast temperature curve as graph instead of node list?

At the moment, only in the roast console. I originally wanted the list views to have the curves as icons, but quickly realized that would not be good for memory management (that would necessitate loading every node into memory), so for speed and performance I decided against it. I agree - there should be a way to view the curve in the curve details screen, though. I want to address that soon.

can an existing curve be used as target or background profile

Yes. First, make sure the graph is set to display past curves. Tap the round "i" button near the graph and set "Past Curves" transparency to a value that you like. Roastmaster will attempt to display the few most recent curves overlaid onto each other, in addition to your current curves, to give you an idea of where things should be going in your current roast. (past curves are displayed most recent first)

Now, this data will, by default, be populated based on the selected buttons in the selector strip. If you want to manually target one or more roasts, tap the magnifying glass icon on that strip to turn it over, then the green "+" button to add or remove roasts from the graph.

Once you've got the graph populated with the data you want, you can hone in even further on curve data with the full screen graph. The full screen graph only displays the curve of 1 roast in addition to the current curves. It chooses that based on what is being displayed in the standard graph, opting for the highest rated, then most recent roast, if more than 1 are being shown. (Crack times and duration are averaged)

About data-logging… The core of data-logging has been complete for about a month in the development version. I've had to backtrack a bit, and beef up a few other areas of the app to support that. An auto-logging environment, as you know, generates a lot more data, and iOS devices have certain memory and speed limitations. I've concentrated a lot of effort into making curves "smarter", and eliminated the need to load curves into memory when performing past roast matching for the graph. It's all under-the-hood stuff at this point, but necessary now that the number of nodes can now grow quite large.

I only put the video up for a short while. I worried that non-english speakers would have no way of knowing that it was demonstrating a feature from a future development version, not the current version on the app store, and be misled a bit. I've got a number of tutorial videos in the works that I want to get back to work on once data logging goes live, but I'll probably use vimeo for that - not quite sure yet.

A few notes about curves and profiles, since we're on that topic. I've beefed up programs and profiles a bit for the update. There will now be two sections in profiles and programs that can hold curves. The existing section will hold control curves, and target temp curves, just as it does now. These will be visible in the roast, but still reside with the profile or program. The new section, will be for holding "Curve templates". These will be blank curve templates that will spawn empty curves within every roast that uses that profile or program, for the purpose of recording data. These curves will only reside in the roast, and allow full data entry without having to recreate them every time. The end result is, that no matter how many curves you track, they're all set up and ready to roll with just two taps. It's a lot easier.

So, as you're getting used to the app, if you're using profiles or programs, store control curves and target reading curves only there. Then, create your reading curves for recording live data in the roast itself. When the update comes out, this workflow can be easily adjusted to allow for a lot more automation.

Let me know any questions you have - I can always help - and thanks for posting!

Kind regards
Danny Hall

[icke]

An auto-logging environment, as you know, generates a lot more data, and iOS devices have certain memory and speed limitations. I've concentrated a lot of effort into making curves "smarter", and eliminated the need to load curves into memory when performing past roast matching for the graph. It's all under-the-hood stuff at this point, but necessary now that the number of nodes can now grow quite large.

even my macbook pro (2.66 GHz Core i7, 8 GB RAM) struggles when running artisan with it's default settings of taking probe readings every second. artisan seems to re-draw the entire curve/screen each time it gets new values and doesn't manage to keep up if new data comes in every second. after changing the interval to read temperatures every 2 seconds it works fine now. so given that you can use core graphics instead of a sluggish generic cross platform open source library as artisan does but seeing that the cpu and memory resources under iOS are even more limited, i can imagine that those intervals need to be a bit slower. reading data every 5 to 10 seconds might still work very well though but i don't know what the limits are. problem i guess might be that you may want to support 1st and last generation iPads... so making these intervals configurable might be the way forward?

i found the full screen curve view and managed to setup a basic profile curve from scratch. how can i copy and paste an existing curve to a profile curve though? i looked but couldn't find how to do that.

cheers,
olaf

[Danny Hall]

Sounds like you know your way around code! Without optimization, graphics can crawl. Core data is pretty amazing, though, at what it can do, and do quickly.

The way I've got it structured is that each reading curve can be bound to a probe, so in the context of a roast it will automatically display the real-time probe temp in the temp field, and sample based on the curve's own independent frequency setting at that interval. I've had mine set on 15 seconds, and I'm happy with that. I'd imagine most people would prefer a faster sample rate. I'll probably allow down to at least 5, maybe lower with a warning. That's kind of where I'm at at the moment in code, figuring out how to thread everything so its as smooth as possible.

how can i copy and paste an existing curve to a profile curve though?

You can do it from either the roasting console, or a curve details screen.

In the roasting console, with one curve selected you can copy just that curve, or with no curves selected - copy them all at once. Tap the blue curve button near the gauge to get the menu. Alternately, in the curve details screen, tap the action button in the upper left (the one that jumps when you arrive on the screen) to get the menu.

Then, in a profile or program, tap the action button in the upper left to get the menu to paste.

If you work with curves frequently, note the preference setting in General-->Completed Roasts. You can set it to always open previous roasts with the roasting console, instead of the watered-down basic view if that's helpful, instead of always having to switch them manually.

Cheers
Danny

[ginny]

oalf:

you will love the app he more you use it, the new version is awesome.

ginny
http://www.homeroasters.org/php/news.php