Interesting… one would think P9 wouldn’t overlap with P8 like that.
I don’t think it’s supposed to? P8 and P7 were more powerful than P9. The wattage continued to drop until I ended the test.
I redid the same test but started at P9. Initially it was 1534w which is where I would expect P9 to live but just as before continued a steady decrease down to 1290w before I ended the experiment.
Would be good if someone else with a wattmeter can run the same test as you for comparison. I would have expected the low end of P9 to be higher than the high end of P8 based on all your other data points. Let us know what support says too…
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What’s the point of P9 being full power if it’s less than the previous two?
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That is really interesting…hopefully Aillio can give you an idea of what’s going on soon.
I wonder if there’s some thermal effect related to the induction board? Did you gather the roaster diagnostic data as the P9 test ran?
Nothing was out of tolerance.
I just ran a few more tests
Can’t get a shorter path to the fuse panel than this. Isolated 20a circuit.
Confirmed the wattage drop of P9 from before. Starts after 4 minutes of roasting. 1500w to 1100w in 10 minutes.
Just out of curiosity, trialed P8. 1350w to 1185w in 10 minutes.
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Saw your post on the other thread in the meantime about augmenting the cooling to the power board as well…
Can you describe the test procedure a little more so I can give it a try and get some data back to you? I think I’m reading this but just wanted to make sure:
- Plug in the roaster with the power meter inline, cycle the roaster directly from standby>preheat>roast.
- Drop power to P1
- Record the range of the power meter readings over a period of at least 2 minutes (by which time the power consumption should reach steady state).
- Increment the power and repeat step 3.
To repeat the experiment more faithfully, what fan/drum setting did you use for this?
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Hey thanks for jumping in!
You have described my process accurately.
Fan 2, drum 9.
This is done without any beans.
So for craps and giggles, I did another test run. This time with RT and a desk fan blowing under the roaster. I was kinda hoping maybe there was a component overheating and causing the drop in power.
No preheat, No beans, P9, F2, D9
Wattage held steady above 1500w for 3:30, then continued it’s steady decline throughout the roast. FC marks the point where wattage had dropped into the 1100w territory.
You can see where the graph changes from a linear-ish temperature increase to a less aggressive rise that correlates with the decrease in wattage.
Assuming this isn’t a safety feature or intentionally coded PID to decrease power over time, no wonder I’m having trouble hitting first crack in the same time as others if my power output drops steadily after 3:30 minutes.
Just spinning my wheels until support gets back to.
Support got back to me early this evening and they suggested updating to the beta firmware 602. Reading the changelogs, I was somewhat hopeful.
Updated the firmware and ran another P9 F2 D9 empty drum test.
Starting wattage was 1500w+. After 8 minutes, the wattage had dropped to 1465. Significantly less than before.
Out of idle curiosity because heat is always bad for electronics, I turned on my “oh crap the IGBT is about to overheat again” fan. Within about 15 seconds, the roaster had returned to 1500w of power draw. The additional fan is on a separate circuit so it wasn’t that added load.
I’m cautiously optimistic. I’ll run some actual roasts tomorrow and see how they compare.
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I put my wattmeter on my bullet: P9, D9, F2 (Firmware 591)
Minutes — Watts ---- PCB temp
0 --------------- 1480 --------- 30
1 ---------------- 1500 -----------32
5 ---------------- 1365 ---------- 33.5
7 ---------------- 1260 ---------- 34.6
9 --------------- 1223 ---------- 36.7
10 -------------- 1176 ----------- 40.6
I put my small underbelly fan directed at the circuit board, but didn’t see the watts rise or the PCB get cooler. (it is a weak fan)
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Did it stay there for how long?
Yup, that basically matches my trend with v591 prior to updating the firmware to v602.
Edit: Placing a fan under the bullet also had no effect for me with v591.
I kept it there for a minute or two. It was late and the bean temp was approaching 300 and I don’t want to run it hotter than that for no specific reason.
I ran two more tests.
Firmware v602 -
Empty Drum, no preheat P9 F2 D9 120v
No underbelly fan:
Starting wattage: 1534w
Ending wattage: 1422w
Ending temperature: 284c
Time: 10 minutes
Allowed to completely cool over an hour
Underbelly fan:
Starting wattage: 1535w
Ending wattage: 1507w-1542w
End temperature: 308c
Time: 9 minutes
The test run with the fan never dropped below 1500w and had a higher ending temperature in less time.
This has got me thinking:
What is happening with the power applied to the induction heating unit during a roast?
I am going to try a couple of more tests this evening.
With my Wattmeter plugged in,
I will do a preheat.
Then a small soak at P5 for about a minute
then P9 for several minutes and see if the induction board is ramping to 1500 Watts.
Or maybe I will just roast some beans with one of my proven profiles and see what the current draw is during the different P levels.
This is kind of discouraging. It is like finding out that we have a car with a faulty gas peddle and we have been flooring it to try to maintain our desired speed.
It is an interesting problem. The thing that concerns me the most is getting consistent results. If the power board is restricting output as the board warms up, back to back roasts will not be the same.
Let us know what you get and also the f/w version you’re on. Sounds like from @krame’s test that the f/w version has something to do with it as well. This is very interesting stuff… 
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I have a number of data points that would suggest this to be the case. Plus Aillio support recommending the firmware upgrade as a fix for the wattage drop.
Also three tests that point towards better underbody cooling leads to a stable power draw with the v602 firmware
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Yea… I’ve been cooling the underbody with a small fan pointing at the left side of the roaster (same side as the plug), but my f/w is a much older version (I think 561 or 567) since I bought mine in Dec 2020. I’ve been hesitant about upgrading the f/w due to so many people having issues with it and having to go into bootloader mode… just didn’t want to deal with a potential time sink to resolve any issues.
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I feel exactly the same way. I am at v591 and am reluctant to upgrade the f/w.
But… I will probably take the risk and upgrade the firmware after my first test. The benefit may be worth the risk.