This reminds of the limitation of my moisture meter, where it cannot (wasn't designed to) measure the moisture of roasted coffee, like the device professionals use, model 902/903. I cared more about moisture of green beans, and use acceptable work-arounds for roasted beans, when I need to.

If your intended purpose of of this device is find the discrepancy between whole and ground coffee to analyze your profiles, or application from sample to production roasts, then this is not the device for you, and you may need to spend more on the right/professional tool for that purpose.

Having a device to quantify the color of your ground roasted coffee, where a variance of 1 degree of temperature EOR translates into a double digit difference in color scale is a very handy tool for those who have a use for it. That by itself is not useless. Using it beyond that, to similar purposes of professional roasters, may be doable with some work-arounds.

another_jim wrote:The faster the roast, and the hotter the environmental temperature, the larger the difference between the whole bean and ground bean reading. a 15 agtron difference is an extremely fast 5 minute roast; a 0 agtron difference is a really slow 20 minute roast.

Is the relationship between agtron difference and roast time that simple? I am wondering if bean density can also have an effect. Do you have an article where the relationship between agtron difference and roasting time is explained?
Regards

Anybody have one & if so what are the thoughts? +|-

I'm also curious about this device. There was some initial interest back in February when they first became available, but Jim had some negative comments about how useful the readings are. The manufacturer says they are flying off the shelves, but I can't find much discussion here or on sites like homeroasters.org.

Yea. I wish we could hear some feedback on here about how people like em a few months into ownership. Maybe I will just buy one. Compared to my other toys it's not that much....

I'm close to ordering one; just been vacillating about about the usefulness. The exchange rate makes it a little pricey.

I became slightly more interested when I got the Phidget setup and read about a lot of the Cropster and Tonino tie-ins. It's still rather expensive and not likely to make me a better roaster, but if I was selling roasts I might like the data points.

But it's also well priced compared to others, I just wish it would do both whole and ground. They'd sell faster than they could make them at this price.

I gave in and just bought one. I think it will help with consistency as I try to improve roasts. Plus this solution is considerably cheaper than any other on the market. I will post a detailed review in the future. Could be over a month before I actually receive my unit.