Thanks. I will try and get it the next time.
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Jacob,
Thank you for your reply. This problem manifested itself right away, but I did not know who to contact.
I could not find the serial number. I bought it directly from Aillio, ordering it in August or September 2018 and receiving it in October, I believe.
It is a great roaster, but its temperatures seem high compared to my previous ones, including a Behmor. And Hottop. I am still adjusting and I am assuming your machine is more accurate.
The Error code is A-01 and I removed the chaff tray and there was nothing blocking the fan. I ended up removing the front and cleaning it including the sensor with rubbing alcohol and that fixed the problem temporarily. The sensor is never very dirty at all.
Any information you could provide would be appreciated.
If you do needs the serial number please tell me where it is located.
Charles Clark
I’m not Jacob, but I think I can help with this one.
A-01 is the dead-man alert. It’s sole purpose is to verify that you are still alive and paying attention. To silence it, press any button on the faceplate of the roaster. Although pressing a button during an A-01 alert it shouldn’t affect roaster operation in any way, I always try to use the arrow buttons, for fear that something like PRS, if acted on, would likely ruin the roast. Note that messing with RoasTime won’t help; you must press a button on the faceplate.
After you silence the alert, everything should continue, as usual.
So you know, the alert will sound every 3 minutes (I think), if the temp is over 220C and no buttons are pressed. There’s no way to avoid or disable your new Euro-nanny. She’s quite annoying and fairly useless, in my opinion.
The “Dead man” alarm is A-02 and not A-01. A-01 means there is an issue with the exhaust fan. Pull the chaff collector and check the fan to make sure it is spinning freely.
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And that kind of sums up the potential confusion between the “dead mans alert” and something wrong with the fan. I mean it’s just a difference of one number…
Could the enigmatic benign A-02 be replaced with something like “hello?” or a voice prompt to press any key ?
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Oops. What he said.
Thank you, but this one is different the dead man alert. I am familiar with that and it stops with the pressing of any button. With the dead-man no error message appears.
However, this one beeps every few seconds, the fan stops turning and does not stop under any circumstances.
Hi Charles,
So the A-01 is a warning about the exhaust fan in the back not spinning. If this warning goes away after a few seconds you can ignore it. You can look through the exhaust to check that is it spinning.
You can also try to do a fan calibration by following this guide> https://community.roast.world/t/new-beta-firmware-507-released/1720?u=bab
About the high temperatures we will need more info such as a screen shot of RoasTime.
Jacob
Jacob,
Yes, the exhaust fan stops spinning and a beeping every few seconds occurs. Nothing I do starts it again. Speed is fine before it stops abruptly. The only thing that seems to work is to wait until thed machine cools and the sensor.
The high temperature was a misstatement based on my mis remembering the error message. It is not an issue.
Thanks.
Okay, so I’ve tried this on several occasions, now. It “works,” but not in a very convenient way. The main issue with this strategy (beside the fact that it’s a bit of a cop out) is that it cancels everything that you’ve already set up for your roast.
For instance, you have to reapply any overlay that you’re using. That’s certainly annoying, but not too bad. Far worse is that it appears to cancel any recipe that you have running - and without saying much about it. I went through a whole roast (my first recipe attempt), with “Recipe Mode” displayed in RoasTime, waiting for the automated changes. Nothing ever happened. In retrospect, it’s clear that the recipe function was not running. I’m not certain what procedure should be used to restart a recipe in this situation. Probably just the obvious: go back and select the recipe then hit “run.”
My point is that this situation should have been avoided, in the first place. What conditions or changes are used to detect the start of roast? Can that be tweaked to avoid the false alarms? Seems like a downturn in IBTS drum/bean temp of, say 20C (or, maybe, 10%?) within a second, might work. Maybe that’s too short a time. I don’t have access the proper data to make a solid suggestion.
I asked in a previous post, but you didn’t say whether you use the bean probe or IBTS to compare to your 245C threshold. Seems like the probe makes sense for an empty drum, but that IBTS is far better, during roasting. And, given that the IBTS is usually higher than the probe, you may want to bump that threshold up a bit for the IBTS.
We use the bean probe to compare to 245 deg C - error 0001.
The IBTS has a limit of 330 deg C no matter the drum is empty or full of beans and this will give error 0002 in the display.
Regarding the auto start this is based on bean temp ROR dropping to -25 OR the IBTS dropping 80 deg C. So if you see very big fluctuations on the ROR this might be what is triggering it. With a closed bean chute lid in an environment without too much wind and a exhaust that can’t easily suck in air or pull air through the bullet this should not happen, but I don’t know what your setup is like.
Opening the door or removing the chaff collector could also trigger an auto start.
Thanks for the info, Jacob. Good to know.
I roast indoors (no wind, temp ~22, humidity ~40) and, when this happens, it’s always before I’ve had a chance to act on the “charge” suggestion. So, the door is closed and the bean chute is plugged.
Since I can clearly see the IBTS temp, I know that it is not dipping by 80C. That leaves the ROR from the probe going to -25, which I wouldn’t see, since the graph doesn’t show negative values. (It’s pointless to stare at the Bullet’s main display and hope to see momentary excursions.)
The only thing left that could possibly cause this is an exhaust fan set-up that I have. It has a piece of 4" flex duct perched about 3 cm above the exhaust outlet of the roaster. It has a variable speed 24 VDC muffin fan in an down-stream piece of rigid aluminum duct, which is controlled by a cheap PWM controller I got on Amazon. I thought that the 3 cm gap would be enough to keep the fan from affecting the roaster temps, but maybe not.
I’ll try to come up with a larger hood-like set-up and give the roaster some more space. Maybe that will do it.
Sound reasonable?
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Sounds good! Let us know.
Jacob,
I did another roast today and just after cleaning the sensor last roast, near the end of the roast I got the A-01 warning. The fanlight went to FA and I could adjust it rom FA to FC to F6. The adjustment did nothing and the machine beeped until it cooled right off. My guess is that cleaning the sensor had nothing to do with it.
In any event, I removed the chaff collector and the fan was turning very slowly. It would slow down the sped up slightly regularly.
Any suggestion?
Sounds good! Let us know.
I’ve bought a large rectangular cake pan to use to build a vent hood. I may have some time on Monday (the US Memorial Day holiday) to work on it. I’m very anxious to see if I can decouple that airflow and avoid “ch-roasting” any more coffee. It may even help support my large batch roasting!
@celticcupcoffee - Here’s what I created to vent both the Drum and Bean Bowl into a single collection box. The box captures all smoke and odor from the ass-end of the Bullet. It is then sucked out through a single vent hose via a variable speed fan. Works great and I’m not getting any errors during roasting.
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Wow. Here I am, trying the decouple the extraction fan from the Bullet’s exhaust, and you’ve got it fully enclosed!
A couple questions:
-
What is the black plastic hood-like thing and where did you get it?
-
How is that lower duct attached to the bean cooler?
Thanks for the ideas, @PapasCup!
@celticcupcoffee - I got the plastic hood on Amazon (linked below) and it was the perfect solution. My thought was not to have anything directly contacting the exhaust of the Bullet. This hood sits a few inches above the Bullet’s exhaust to collect whatever comes out and direct it down-line.
POWERTEC 70169 Mini Gulp Dust Hood with 4" Port
POWERTEC 70111 PVC Dust Collection Hose (Clear)
That 4" clear duct hose fits right onto the back of the Bullet’s Fan area that draws cool air through the bean cooling bowl. It doesn’t require any fitting on the fan end, but I do have it connected to a 4" mounting flange on the Exhaust Box lower area. When I cut that particular piece of 4" tubing, I cut it just slightly long so that it had just a slight amount of forward spring-pressure to keep it pressed to the backside of the Bullet’s Cooling fan.
I love that clear 4" tubing because I can easily see if I have any debris or roast-dust collecting in the tubing. Thanks to the excellent exhaust and filtration of the Bullet’s design, that entire exhaust chain of the Tubing, my Collection Box and the variable fan are all staying clean. Good going Aillio! 
The box is just standard foil-lined sheathing that you would use on an exterior wall of the home. I had enough of that laying around from a prior project, that I grabbed it and built an enclosed box from it. I mounted that plastic vent hood on top and sealed everything with foil duct tape. It isn’t a “thing of beauty”, but it works like a champ. 
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i would be careful with this kind of setup if the inline fan starts introducing more airflow.
@jacob - That’s where having a Magnehelic installed onto the Bullet can come in handy. 
With my setup, there is no air-flow change (within the Bullet) due to the variable speed fan that is down-line of the smoke collection chamber. The variable speed fan (on low speed) simply helps push the smoke and odor outdoors. The only thing that changes airflow/pressure in the Bullet (as measured by the Magnehelic) is changing the Fan speed of the Bullet itself.
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