Yes, wondering if they have any kind of regulation of the temperature, or just fixed power percents...
Their so called profiles are deceivingly simplistic to detect such subtleties.
This dilemma can be easily solved if owning a variac, and vary voltage with some 5V during a roast, then examine the roast log if the system responded adapting power level to maintain hot air temperature.

I have been roasting on poppers for about a dozen years and before that a whirley pop. About 7 years ago I bought an sr500 and then a Nesco roaster with the auger for agitation. Then a year later picked up a Behmor 1600 plus. In the mean time I've always kept 2 unmodified poppers. One is a West Bend Poppery 2 and the other a popcorn pumper where I can get nice city-city plus roasts in the 6-8 minute range roasting times.

I recently picked up an SR800 with the OEM Extention Tube and the chamber mod by Razzo. The roasts are amazing and I'm following a controlled system approach where I only change airflow and my heat/power setting stays on 4 the entire roast. I begin with 9/4 and end at sometimes 4/4 or 3/4 depending on roast time/development. This usually gets me a total roast time in the 8-10 minute range depending on the bean. My family has said this is by far the best coffee I have made and they are by far my greatest critics.

I say all of that to say this. I'm still going to buy Sweet Marias Popper just to have a modified Popper and see what I can do with having the fan/heat controls and then compare those results with my Poppery 2 and SR800. I think its fair to compare various types of fluid bed roasters and see what the results are like when comparing the 3 with the same bean. There is something about a popper I really like and maybe its because its 100% sensory with sight, smell and sound.

At $89 and without having to go through all the trial/error of finding the right popper and then modifying it you might as well get the SM Popper and save yourself all the trouble and frustration of getting that perfect roasting machine under the $100 price point.

I just got mine yesterday and I really like it. The first roast, the included Guatemala Finca Rosma, seems to have turned out better than I expected for being a very light roast on a roaster I've never used before. I stopped it right at the end of first crack. Today it smells and tastes like raisins and brown sugar, with a pleasant acidity that makes me think of blackberries. It doesn't seem to be underdeveloped, but it's a little roasty. A couple hours ago I roasted an Agaro that was part of the sample pack. I accidentally let it go into the cooling cycle for a bit just before it got to first crack, but fortunately turning the time above 3 minutes turns the heat back on so it could finish roasting. Somehow it still has a really nice aroma of lemongrass and jasmine. Hopefully it tastes as good as it smells.

@2112 Would you mind sharing your 2 roast profiles above on the 2 roasts. Also did you use a probe to monitor temps? Thanks

Currently the closest thing I have to monitoring the temperature is watching the color of the beans. Finca Rosma didn't turn out as well as I initially thought and I didn't take any notes during that roast. For the Agaro, I started the roast with the heat at 12:00, and I increased it to 2:00 at 2 minutes. 90g of beans, yellow at about 3:30, just about to crack at 7 minutes, cooled for about a minute before I realized why it wasn't cracking yet, and it had somewhere between 1-2 minutes of development time from the start of first crack. I plan to test that profile without the accidental cooling within the next couple days.

Using a thermometer to measure temperature is extremely helpful in monitoring roast temp and adjusting it in real time. SM shows how a termometer can be installed by drillingthrough the back of the case at alevel just above the vents at the bottom of the roast chamber. I took another approach with mine, drilling a hole in the cover directly above the center of the chamber. I found a couple of Taylor thermometers with probes long enough to reach the bean mass. It can be adusted a bit up and down as the roast proceeds (and the mass rises). This allows a very reliable way to measure roast temperature, more adjustable than the SM mod does. Either one, however, allows much more precise roast profiling than is possible just by looking at and listening to the roast as it progresses.

After about 50 roasts, here are my starter profiles that I'm liking. My power scale goes from 0-6 rather than 9:00 - 3:00 (to not confuse it with roasting time). And I have a thermocouple drilled into the back pointing near the top of the bean mass. As always, your actual power dial setting will be different depending on your mains voltage, and I will actively tweak power to make the times and temperatures I've planned, but it still might be useful here to see where I've been changing power.

Filter - Wet Processed - Light [Medium]
Plan - Get to DE fairly quickly (but allow enough time to cook out grassy tastes). Spend ~40% of roast time in browning phase. Vary development phase for desired roast level.
0:00 - 3.75 high 90 g charge
2:30 - 3.6 high DE 330F
4:45 - 4 high (momentum for 1C)
5:30 - 3.6 low 1C 405F
6:30 - 3.5 low (1C peak, lower to coast)
7:00 - 3.5 low 1C end
7:15 [8:00] - drop 435F (443F)
13.5% [15.0%] weight reduction

Filter - Dry Processed - Light
Plan - Slow down drying to prevent scorching dry processed beans. Spend ~37% of roast time in browning phase, less than for wet processed to preserve origin character. Drop at lighter end of City to preserve acidity (playing around with my ideal roast level though)
0:00 - 3.3 high 90 g charge
1:00 - 3.5 high
2:00 - 3.7 high
3:00 - 3.6 high DE 345F
4:45 - 4 high (momentum for 1C)
5:30 - 3.6 low 1C 405F
6:30 - 3.5 low (1C peak, lower to coast)
6:45 - drop 433F
12.5% weight reduction

Espresso - Wet Processed - Medium
Plan - Slow down time to 1C to have more even external / internal roast level (to make espresso less imbalanced). Spend ~47% of roast time in browning phase. Drop according to desired roast level (medium here)
0:00 - 3.5 high 90 g charge
3:15 - 3.3 high DE 355F
6:15 - 4 high (momentum for 1C)
7:00 - 3.6 high 1C 430F
7:50 - 3.5 high (1C peak, lower to coast)
8:30 - 3.5 high 1C end
9:30 - drop 456F
16.7% weight reduction

Note - The dry processed profile are my newest attempts so I'm still working on iterations. But they've also been my favorite tasting roasts, so I wanted to include it. I did a semi-blind cupping of a recent dry processed roast against 2 supermarket light roasts and a light roast from a local roaster, and I scored my roast highest! Could have been the freshness of my roast, but it still shows that Popper can produce excellent results.

And here are the sources that helped me start creating profiles.

The Captain's Coffee - great series on the Fresh Roast. This is similar to the Popper and the same roast rationale should apply
Roasting Medium Washed
Roasting Light Natural

Sweet Maria's - Intro roast, also teases at how to change profile for espresso
Sweet Marias Popper Demo Roast (16:17 for difference between brew and espresso profile)

Virtual Coffee Lab - Good breakdown of importance of drying, browning, and development phases
How to Roast Sweet Flavorful Coffee (5.:30 for roast phases)

How to do consistent consecutive roasts,thermocouple installation, plus some notes on sample roasting at the end of the video (14:10)

Good find! I'm glad SM's profile is pretty close to my profile for light roast wet processed (at least I'm headed in the right direction).

But I wonder when he says run two cooling cycles between back-to-back roasts, does that mean 3 min bean cooldown with an additional 3 min cool run with an empty chamber? Or is it 6 min cool run post-roast? If it's the former, you could just squeeze in 400 g of beans in the time it would take a home drum machine to preheat and roast.