Roasty wrote:Any specific Watt Meter recommendations? If you could point me to one on amazon, it would be much appreciated.

I purchased the Poniie PN2000. I read it was the fastest refresh which is exactly what you want. As soon as you make a small change you want to see it reflected ASAP on the screen. I'm easily able to adjust my watts by 10 watts if I wanted to with a slight feather like movement on the dial.

dhdhk wrote:Interesting.... are you saying that the watt meter makes it easier to control the roast curve to match a profile? Or do you think that even if the roast curve matches according to Aritsan/probe, there might actually be differences in heat output? I roast with an electric drum roaster and I can get things pretty close just by eyeing the curve in the background and fiddling with the heat throttle.

Yes, I am saying it is easier to control the roast curve to match a profile once you get to know your roaster of course because you are able to match the exact same power output to your heating elements at your specified time/temp.

The needle on the Quest M3 roaster may be hard to interpret exactly the same every time because it can be in between two lines. It's also on the side so if you have the roaster facing you, you must lean forward, twist your head and then make your adjustment. Depending on how you look at the dial you will get parallax error if you don't do it from the exact same angle every time and with dials you want to be perpendicular to them as well.

Much easier to be looking at an LCD screen as you are twisting the adjustment knob and I know exactly where I am at. Having not enough power can cause a small roaster to crash for example.

Behmors don't have a bean probe, and no artisan interface. And yes, the voltage from the wall can shift dramatically based upon electric grid load.

Sorry, I don't follow. I thought a meter is used to see how much watts is used, and see variations.

What I reading is that you are able to adjusr the wattage? What am i missing?
I had a hottop not the plus one. How can increase the watt comsumption if I see it is not drawing enough?

Current flow is continuously adjustable on a Quest, so a wattmeter enables more precise adjustments than the analog meter on the Quest. On the HotTop you have ten (IIRC) fixed steps for power so you don't have that issue. All you have to do is ensure the mains supply is constant.

So, on the HotTop - and the Quest, for that matter - one uses a voltmeter to measure the input mains voltage during the roast. Usually the Kill-A-Watt brand meters are used because no wiring changes are needed. ETA: FOR THE HOTTOP, NOT THE QUEST, Once one can see if mains voltage varies, and by how much, then the usual solution is an autotransformer (a.k.a. Variac) to manually adjust the voltage going to the roaster to ensure that the mains voltage is held constant throughout the roasts. For example, in much of North America, mains voltage drops/fluctuates during the summer depending on air conditioner usage, brownouts, weekday/weekend, etc. (although not this summer due to covid).

fidelfs wrote:Sorry, I don't follow. I thought a meter is used to see how much watts is used, and see variations.
What I reading is that you are able to adjusr the wattage? What am i missing?
I had a hottop not the plus one. How can increase the watt comsumption if I see it is not drawing enough?

The Hottop's power control is done by pulse modulation. I do not remember the total time for each pulse, but for example, if you set it for 75%, the heating element is on for .75% and off for .25% of the time. I do not see how a wattmeter would be of value in that case. If you isolate the heating element and run it off a variable external supply that would ba another matter. Beyond that, the response time to changes is quite slow in a Hottop.

One does not need an autotransformer with a Quest. With a Kill-a-Watt (or other similar meters that read power), one simply turns the rheostat (potentiometer, actually) to achieve the desired power, as displayed on the Kill-a-Watt. There's no need to be concerned about the voltage of the mains or the current displayed on the little meter. The heat generated by the heater is directly proportional to the power (Watts) not the voltage or the current as independent variables. (P=I*E, Power in Watts equals Current in Amperes times EMF in Volts). If the voltages sags a bit, you'll see the power drop on the Kill-a-Watt and nudge the rheostat appropriately. It's Watts what counts <ha, ha>.

The rheostat on the Quest is very twitchy; so it's hard to set the machine exactly to any given power consumption. But if you're really fussy, after making a change, wait a bit and look again at the power on the Kill-a-Watt. As a resistance heater warms/cools, its resistance changes a bit. You have to do a little touch-up once the machine has stabilized to get exactly what you want.

Randy G. wrote:The Hottop's power control is done by pulse modulation. I do not remember the total time for each pulse, but for example, if you set it for 75%, the heating element is on for .75% and off for .25% of the time. I do not see how a wattmeter would be of value in that case. If you isolate the heating element and run it off a variable external supply that would ba another matter. Beyond that, the response time to changes is quite slow in a Hottop.

Your correct.
It probably wont work with high frequency .

Nunas wrote:
The rheostat on the Quest is very twitchy; so it's hard to set the machine exactly to any given power consumption. But if you're really fussy, after making a change, wait a bit and look again at the power on the Kill-a-Watt. As a resistance heater warms/cools, its resistance changes a bit. You have to do a little touch-up once the machine has stabilized to get exactly what you want.

I've actually noticed this. I don't know exactly how long it takes to notice a change but when I make a change and then look down to drop it even more I notice it's usually 10 watts lower on average and this doesn't happen every time either. Which I don't think makes too much of a difference.

So, the "point" of getting a kill-a-watt, or similar, is just like getting a digital read-out, vs analog watch-face clock, to read time from a potentially off-axis viewing position?

Has anyone had any insertion loss of voltage or current from adding connections to the power path?

I have a kill-a-watt in my wire collection, and just switched over from using a Kaldi New Wide to a Quest M6 (yesterday, in fact.) seems like i have to set the current knob much higher than what people suggest online... I should probably try the meter to see what's going on - the M6 is plugged right into the outlet, which is only about 5 feet from the breaker panel in my basement - nothing else of note is running on that circuit with it.