Last November we released Artisan v0.5.6 that only added a minor fix for the Voltcraft K201 meter over Artisan v0.5.5, which is available already since September 2011. The development of Artisan seems to have stopped. Not true!
We focused on preparing for some major updates of Artisan's underpinnings, especially the move from Python v2.7.x to 3.x and the update of the graphing library matplotlib to 1.2.x. Both updates should increase stability and performance of Artisan. This is now mostly done and we spent the last weeks on realizing suggestions and feature requests we received from our users via different channels.
Today we release the first beta builds of Artisan v0.6b1 for Windows and Mac OS X to the Artisan project page at Google Code. The major changes for users are as follows:
- OS X build does not support versions before 10.6 or PPC processors anymore
- File Handling
- file extension of profiles changed from .txt to .alog
- profile file icon (OS X only)
- load on double click (OS X only)
- JSON import/export
- RoastLogger import/export
- Monitoring-only Mode reporting readings on LCDs without recording
- Events
- COOL event recording the time the beans were cooled down
- event sliders e.g. to control the Hottop heater and fan via the HT Roaster Interface
- event value range extended from [0-10] to [0-100]
- Alarms
- alarms on rising and falling temperatures
- alarm chains allowing one alarm to be triggered only after another one
- alarms triggered by all measured temperatures, not only ET/BT, incl. DeltaET/DeltaBT
- Supported Devices
- added support for meters connected via MODBUS RTU
- added support for digital scales from KERN
- added support for Amprobe TMD-56
- Curves
- smoothing of all curves (not only DeltaET/DeltaBT)
- line and marker styles can be customized via the Figure Options menu (green flag button)
- Others
- visibility of LCDs, curves, and default event buttons now customizable
- adds a *CUSTOM* cup profile that is stored in the application settings
- computation of the area between the BT and ET curves (ETBTa)
This as all future beta versions of Artisan might be unstable and are not intended for production use. Artisan follows an experimental approach to roasting by testing new innovative (sometimes crazy or stupid) concepts. If you are looking for a simple tool to just log your roasts, there might be better options such as RoastLogger, Typica or RosterThing.
We like to receive feedback from you, but we are not able to provide full commercial support. While we know that some Artisan users run commercial roasting facilities and are happy with our artisan-approach, others might be better off using roasting software that comes with full commercial support, like Cropster, RoastLog, Profiling Dynamics™ Coffee Roasting Control by Roaster Dynamics, or Probat Pilot.
We would like to thank Jim Gallt (HT Roaster Interface), Brad (TC4 PID), Matt, David Trebilcock, Kalle (DTA) for supporting the development of this version.
The Artisan team
