I saw a while ago a thread about using an external keypad to change the Air, Drum speed, Damper, Burner settings.

Hard-Wiring Artisan Event Buttons

It turns out that if you type a prefix letter followed by two numbers, you can set those values from the keyboard. (Q,W,E,R are the prefixes). For example setting the Burner to 50% you type R50.

I roast outdoors and sometimes it is so bright, I have trouble seeing the cursor on my laptop. An external keypad would be a big help. The thread that I referenced talked about creating a dedicated keyboard. That got me thinking...Why not use something like a Stream Deck with the ability to assign keystrokes to a button. The keypad attaches via a USB cable.

Well, it works! See image.

I was able to code keys for the burner settings as well as the air settings. I have verified that Artisan can see the key presses but have yet to do a roast with the new keypad. I will keep you posted.

Cheers,
Bill

Very cool! Thanks for sharing.

Update:

I did the first roast with the keypad and it worked great! I used to have to spend time figuring out where the cursor was on the screen so I could hit the right button....but now I spent that time watching the roast. It always get hectic around first crack when you are watching the graph, listening for the pops, using the tryer. This new keypad added a level of calmness that I needed.

The good:
They keys are easy to press and have good tactile feedback.
The keys are easy to see in bright environment (outside)
The keypad is small enough to fit on my little laptop table without getting in the way.

The not-so-good:
It is a little difficult to make out what your current gas setting is in artisan. I turned on the slider and that has a nice big label. (More on this in future post).
The stream deck is not particularly inexpensive. (but neither are greens these days).
Currently no way using the keypad to mark DE, FC, etc. (more on this in future post).
Minor- The way that Artisan accepts keystrokes means that you can't say Burner 100%. It only accepts 2 characters so you get Burner 99%. No big deal.

All-in-all a good addition to the roaster.
Cheers,
bill



ps. The roast is a super good Columbia from Showroom Coffee + 25% India robusta.

I like your work on this very much! Also because the maker of those keys is from around me.

Wbj828 wrote: Currently no way using the keypad to mark DE, FC, etc. (more on this in future post).

Do you know the "keyboard mode" in Artisan. It is activated by pressing RETURN/ENTER during a roast. You can use the left/right keys to select one of the event keys which is activated by hitting SPACE. The selected key is automatically progressing to the next event key on activation, thus in the best case you only need to hit the SPACE key twice, once to enter DRY and once to mark FCs. Thus I do not see much need to use the external keys to enter standard events.

However, maybe a number of other actions could be triggered if only Artisan would accept more keyboard short cuts. Thus I just added another keyboard short cut (OPTION-B + <2 digits>) to trigger the custom event button action of the number indicated by those two digits. Thus a 01 will fire the action of the first custom event button. Those custom event button actions are quite powerful. They can run external scripts, send serial/MODBUS/.. commands to connected devices, switch PID modes, change playback mode, load background profiles, show/hide curves, open the properties dialog and much more (see the help page under the HELP button in the events/button tab). Note that those custom event buttons can be hidden thus you can use them just as a "gateway" to their button actions triggered from your keys. The [current development build](https://github.com/artisan-roaster-scop ... continuous) already contains this feature.

Wbj828 wrote: Minor- The way that Artisan accepts keystrokes means that you can't say Burner 100%. It only accepts 2 characters so you get Burner 99%. No big deal.

Yes this is a known minor restriction of this approach in Artisan.

Marko,

Great job on the new feature!

I got the bigger version of the Stream Deck and between that and your new feature my roasting setup is improved 100%



Now I am almost completely free of the mouse/trackpad.

Also, with the Custom Event keys not showing, the graph looks even better.

For those that decide to try this....look for a "Multi-Event" in the Stream Deck software. The first event is the Option-B followed by a Text action with the number of the event.

Finally, since I am an artisan plus subscriber (great tool even for home roasters), I can press one key to bring up the website. (I used to always have to look up what the website address is...but now its easy).

Maybe this isn't for everyone...but for me a big step forward.

Bill

Cool! Just ordered my mk2. They are 20% off with free shipping this weekend....

I ran into to someone who makes small 8 Key and a 10 Key with a knob pads that might be useful for this, but how to configure them is far beyond my knowledge of Artisan. If you're interested in talking to him, please leave me a PM and I'll pass on his contact info. Or you can just contact him through Crowd Supply. I'd invite him but it's a bit close to commercial for me to be comfortable with that. But it's a lot less money than the Stream Deck and I thought it might be useful. And he's been very responsive over the last 2 days, including looking at the Artisan code on Github to see how it might integrate.

https://www.crowdsupply.com/anavi-techn ... cro-pad-10
https://www.crowdsupply.com/anavi-techn ... acro-pad-8

MaKoMo wrote:Cool! Just ordered my mk2. They are 20% off with free shipping this weekend....

Link to buy?

The company producing those is called elgato, the product is called Stream Deck. There is the older original Stream Deck, the mini, the mk2 and the XL. Just discovered that there is even a Python API....