Hi all - I fired up the FreshRoast sr 700 today for the first time... I'd poked around a fair bit ahead of time and gathered that the FreshBean software was not very sophisticated and that OpenRoast was a better bet - I tried that, loaded one of the provided profiles as 'let's see what happens' starting point. What happened was that the temperature shot up to 440 degrees and went up from there. I cut the roast short by color and sound... Poking around further, I found that this is a known bug, apparently, with at least some SR 700s... https://github.com/Roastero/Openroast/issues/73 (I guess what I see is the same). So, why not, I tried the FreshBean and copied what looked like a reasonable profile and tried it - the heat setting appeared to be correct according to the profile, low for a few minutes, high fan - but the temp again was at 400+ very quickly. I ended up running it manually, so to speak, to get the roast done - both attempts described here finished well before the advertised time for the profiles.

So... is this all really just pilot error, and I'm missing a link? I have not found an awful lot of blow by blow instructions so I suspect it is all normally pretty easy, but... well, thanks for any comments or direction.

(later, I tried getting Artisan to work- that looks like the way to go if it works- but so far not succeeding - anyone who has done that and is willing to hold my hand to set it up would be a gentleperson and a scholar.)

cheers,

You can sign up for the Artisan Community and ask for ideas there.

https://artisan-scope.org/docs/community/

Hi Michael - thanks, I'll take a look.

Wow, I'd be interested to hear from any FR700 users who think this is a good design... I've just spent some quality time with a pound of greens and my SR700... and while I think I have some OK coffee out the end, I cannot quite believe that this is how it's meant to work. I'd be grateful to be set straight but I am not impressed so far. I think the basic machinery is probably fine, it's the control... it can't possibly be this hard.

- with no computer connected at all, I see no way to change the heat setting - it's on low and stays on low. No amount of button-pushing changes it so far, though I can get the fan and time to change, albeit in the clumsiest possible way.

- from OpenRoast via USB, clearly the heat is always on High, nothing changes that that I can see, the target temperature is ignored completely. The front panel does not light up the L/M/H as you might expect... I can tell it's on high because my beans are espresso in about 4 minutes no matter what I do.

- from the accompanying 'Fresh Beans' UI, which is almost insanely bad in every respect, it is possible to get some control, again, in the most clunky and non-intuitive, stupid, way imaginable, and I got a couple of decent batches, I think. Time displayed in tenths of a minute... lordy.

Phew.

You might find some helpful information in this older thread
FreshRoast SR700 with OpenRoast software

And you may well already have seen it

Hi Susan - thanks, I did read that, and as best I can tell I am suffering from the bug posted on GitHub/Open Roast about not properly controlling the heat setting in some cases - Mine is one of those cases, apparently. Open Roast looks promising apart from that issue but of course it is a stopper. I suppose I'll have to bite the bullet and join the dreaded FB so that I can get some support on the group/forum there. Or get Artisan working.

I'm curious, does that SR700 have thermocouples intalled so that you can hook it up to a meter (Phidget or something else) and then run those readings into Artisan? The pictures are unclear, and I'm not familiar with the machine.

Edit: I see that there must be some accommodation for use with Artisan based on yet another old HB post
Fresh Roast SR700 + Phidget 1048_0B + Artisan software

And, yes, it looks like all roads lead to FB