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Note: This is a datalogger installation on a new roaster only. You must also purchase the Hottop roaster of your choice. This product can be fitted to any of the Hottop roasters we offer.
Passionate roasters have been adding bean mass probes to the bean chute covers for years; but they look pretty ugly and they interfere with simple loading of the beans. The alternative is an internally mounted probe, but this is a much harder job and voids the roaster warranty - and who wants to do that to a brand new roaster? So why not purchase a brand new Hottop with a datalogging bean mass temperature probe professionally installed??
First up, why would you want one? As this graph shows, the actual bean temperature can be anywhere from 0 to 30 degrees BELOW the reading on the Hottop control panel, or even slightly above! The bean cracks are critical milestones in a roast, and while a given type of bean will crack at almost exactly the same temperature every time, various factors such as the ambient temperature, roast capacity and roast profile may mean the air temperature required to get the beans to crack is different - and that's what's being measured by the roaster. Since the difference between the displayed temperature and the bean temperature CHANGES as the roast progresses, you can never be sure what temperature the beans are actually at! Without accurate bean temperature data, it can be quite hit and miss knowing how soon beans are going to crack and therefore what program changes to make in anticipation of that.
"What?", you say, "so the Hottop's temperature isn't even accurate?!" Before you panic, for safety reasons EVERY domestic roaster on the market (at the time of writing) employs an 'environmental' sensor, measuring the hottest part of the roaster - the temperature of the air inside the drum (or, in the case of the Gene Cafe, the air after it's left the drum) rather than the beans which are somewhat cooler. The Hottop's environmental sensor is in fact better than most as it sits extremely close to the beans so it's one of the most accurate environmental sensors out there. By employing an environmental sensor the manufacturers can be certain the device isn't going to overheat and catch fire. The environmental sensor can still give an approximate indication of the temperature of the beans but it's never an exact correlation.
This then is where the Hottop comes into its own. One of the beauties of the Hottop's design is its inherent ability to have a bean mass temperature probe fitted, which is simply a temperature sensor sitting in amongst the beans as they're roasting. The drum design of most other roasters makes such an installation impossible to perform, and thus this critical data remains hidden. A bean mass probe gives you an accurate figure of what the beans are doing, thus programming suddenly becomes a lot easier because you have accurate data to work on!
But wait, there's more! The device we have employed incorporates a USB output and includes datalogging software. This means you can connect the datalogger to a PC or laptop, watch a live graph of the bean temperature as the roast progresses, save a copy of the logged data for your records and make the sort of graph as seen on this page! It really does take an already brilliant roaster to another level altogether!
Datalogger Usage
Use of the datalogger is very simple. Simply connect the plug on the end of the yellow cord coming out of your roaster to the datalogger via the adapter plug, making sure you line up all the positive (+) marks on the plugs and the meter. Then, rotate the switch on the meter to the oC setting and the current temperature inside the roaster will show on the screen. To enable the signal to be sent out on the USB port, press the RS232 button and an icon will show on the screen to show this setting has been enabled. Then, connect the USB lead from the multimeter to your computer and start the datalogging software (download below).
The datalogging software is free software provided with no warranty claimed or implied. We have found it to be useful but it is not our software. The software works under Windows XP or Vista and requires .NET and Java (and therefore a system capable of running these frameworks). As such it won't work under Mac or Linux, or on any Windows system which has insufficient resources to run .NET and Java. Here are some links to various things you will / may need:
Note: By purchasing this item you are purchasing ONLY the datalogger and its installation into a new Hottop roaster. You must also purchase the roaster of your choice. The pictures on this page show the datalogger installed into a roaster simply to show the finished installed product.
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