Hello,
I’ve used my R2 Pro for about 10 roasts prior to installing the latest v. 66 firmware. Throughout those roasts, the “Dead Man’s Switch” alert never turned on during a roast, not even once.
Now, with v. 66, it turns on every 2 minutes, even during a roast. I find it distracting and believe it is a bug with the new firmware.
Can you please look into it and advise? For now, I am going to see if I can revert back to the older firmware.
I’m not an R2 owner but…
The ‘nag’ is expected operation on an R1 and I would assume now with the R2. Starts after reaching (I think!!) Drum Temp =/> 175°C. The intent is to assure the operator is present and make a power reduction (Off?) if they’ve been called away. IIRC it was introduced in order to be compliant with EU regulations. I’m pretty sure it isn’t going away.
Bruce
Thank you, Bruce. It is very different behavior than what the R2 did prior to v. 66.
Is it supposed to activate 4 times on a 12-minute roast? That seems quite excessive to me, especially when it never turned on before. I could understand perhaps once after 5 or 10 minutes, but this…
It’s a timer executed by the f/w. Once you reach the threshold temperature the Bullet starts that timer. After (I think!) 2 minutes the Bullet sends an alarm and you have a certain time in which to respond by pressing whatever button is used on the R2. The f/w timer is confirming an operator is present and aware of what the roaster is doing. I’m in the US so I am a non-resident commenting on regulations I’ve never read but my R1 Bullet used in the US market operates with the same f/w used in the EU because it’s a safe way to operate the roaster.
The EU decided they don’t want unattended devices consuming large amounts of power at high temperature without an operator present to monitor the process. The process for confirmation that Aillio chose was to press a Roaster button sometime within 2 minutes. If you fail to do that within the 2 minute window the roaster will sound the alert. If you fail to respond to the alert the roaster f/w will change power to a safe setting which I presume is P=0. Fan and Drum are probably not altered as stopping them could cause the now-hot beans to ignite.
I’ve never had the f/w do a shutdown as I make sure I respond to the alarm. So I’m repeating what I think I read years ago when this was first implemented in the R1.
And btw, if you routinely press a button within the time window it resets the timer in the f/w and you’ll never hear an alert.
Bruce
ps- these are early days. I would anticipate you will see many f/w changes as the R2 comes up to a stable operating configuration.
Hey Bruce,
I have been dealing with this on the R1 lately.
I am hard of hearing in certain frequencies from factories and guns.
The dead-man alarm is extremely hard for me to hear and it is such a short duration.
On my Bullet, after I load the beans and the bullet says: “Roasting” , I will get the dead-man alarm after about 7 minutes. (it is likely that it is a threshold temperature plus 2 minutes) The dead-man alarm beeps (from a buzzer on a circuit board that is right next to the USB port on the back of the control unit)
The Dead-man buzzer beeps for 1 second and then is quiet for 10 seconds and then beeps for 1 second, and then is quiet for 10 seconds until 1 minute (i believe) is reached and then the power goes to P0 and the Fan goes to F12. I am not sure if the Drum is changed to D9. (I am already at D9) After you press a button (but NOT the PRS button) The bullet will start a 2 minute timer and then the A02 alarm will beep again.
As you have noted, If you press a button before the A02 starts, it resets the timer and you will never get the A02.
Because I am using a microphone and a personal PA system so that I can hear the cracks, that amplification masks the A02 alarm for me.
I recently added a couple of High brightness LEDs to the 5 volt from the buzzer (very low current draw) and that worked but the 1 second is too quick to catch every time.
I drilled a hole in the plastic housing next to the USB computer port on the back of the control unit and added a second microphone directly in front of the buzzer. Now I can hear the A02, but it is also amplifying the speaker. I need to turn the volume down on the speaker and then I should be good to go.
I will document and share what I have done, when I am finished.
BTW: If the Bullet goes into Dead-man state, You can scramble and restart the Power and reset the Fan level and if you are running a recipe, it will finish the recipe but the curve will be off.
The image below is where I recovered from a dead-man situation.
@ibnabouna ,
In answer to your question, Yes the dead-man alert will continue every 2 minutes after it reaches the preset A02 temperature until you end the roast.
As Bruce pointed out, this is to comply with EU and probably US UL standards and we shouldn’t expect them to go away. (whether we like them or not)
Thank you, both, for your thorough answers. I respect having safety features, but looking back at my roasts from yesterday, it seems as though the same thing that happened to @billc occurred. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why my power dropped to P0 out of nowhere (no warning that I could see or hear) and ruined my roast. It was such a steep decline in the ROR that I had difficulty bringing it back and I’m sure that roast won’t taste as it should.
It was because of this “Dead Man’s Switch” feature.
Now, I am supportive of whatever reasonable safety measures a company can deploy, but at this point, this “feature” is interfering with the very reason for the machine’s existence: to roast coffee. If it will be so overly active that it will turn on continuously and prevent the user from managing the roast, or worse, randomly shut the power down without warning, then something needs to be done. I do believe there is a bug in how this safety measure is working in v. 66, so I downgraded the firmware back to what it was before in the hope that it will be like when I first had the R2.
Lastly, if Aillio wants to implement this safety measure, I suggest they wait until it can be incorporated into Roast Time in addition to the control panel of the machine. If the idea is for users to use Roast Time to control their machine parameters (I set my power, fan, and drum via RT exclusively) and monitor the roast (that’s what the graph is for, right?), then it makes no sense for the safety measure to impact only the control panel. After all, if the user is looking at the computer screen, what benefit is it for the control panel to beep in a noisy environment? When I roast on the R2, my eye and focus is on the computer most of the time, except for those moments when I need to check the beans via the trier.
Those are my thoughts on the matter. Again, I am not against reasonable safety measures and appreciate them, but they need to be implemented correctly in a manner that will not interfere with the normal and enjoyable operation of the machine. I believe there is a way to do that, and the current implementation is not it.
Since you have an R2 my experience may not be applicable. But I won’t let a little thing like that keep me from speculating that…
You may have seen a power board issue resulting from a high junction temperature shutting down power to protect power board components (btw, you did a good job recovering manually). I don’t see radical high temps in the roast profile you posted and I don’t see the fan changing F->12 as @billc describes for the safety issue. You really need to start a dialog with Aillio support so that someone familiar with R2 power board design can give you a meaningful answer.
Bruce
Wow! Good job recovering that roast Bill. You were on top of it to get that little effect from P->0 & F->12. Your innovations for helping yourself solve the issue are pretty amazing.
Yeah, EU requirements don’t address issues with hearing impairment. My hearing is compromised too but I’ve been able to use hearing aids to recover a lot of what I need to get by. Not perfect and they can be a pita but hearing aids have helped me immensely. Some of the options I’ve seen for hearing impaired are way beyond what I would want to deal with.
As an aside… COSTCO is a blessing for many of us with hearing issues. It’s a good thing Warren Buffett owns a big chunk of COSTCO and needs hearing aids!!
Bruce
I bought the Kirkland branded hearing aids a few years ago. They have since discontinued selling them.
I don’t wear them often. I work from my home office and I don’t normally need them there.
I have tried them with the Bullet but hearing the cracks, (especially SC) is difficult. The microphone that I use amplifies everything. The noise of the beans tumbling is picked up by the microphone and drowns out other things.
I tried to find true noise cancelling software for this where you sample the beans tumbling and tell the software to filter out that noise. Then all that is left is the popping of the beans.
I couldn’t find any software at a reasonable price that would do that.
Our local COSTCO (Tucson) has a hearing aid department. I’m not familiar with the COSTCO Kirkland product though I heard they were going to have something. I bought a Danish product the first time around (excellent!). This time they had a Phillips product which has a broader frequency range.
At the Tucson store they did a full range hearing test in the sound booth and worked out the adjustment profile to program the hearing aids. And they support the hearing aids for 5 years with additional adjustments (from additional hearing deterioration) and repairs. I bought the replacement insurance (my wife rolled her eyes at that add-on). Then I managed to lose my first pair after a year of use so I’m a believer in the replacement insurance (what can I say? I’m old!!).
Bruce
Edit- the first hearing aids used replaceable batteries which lasted 5-8 days. Now I have hearing aids with rechargeable batteries: I set the hearing aids in the charger at nite and they’re good to go in the morning. PITA for travel but it’s the price of admission.
In the beginning I was running into the alarm as well when I roast my 1.1kg batches on the R1V2 (I’m in the US) but I now mitigate the alarms by using the control panel to change my F/D/P settings and the laptop is just to monitor the curve. I find this actually worked better for me because if I leave my hand on the mouse I have a “jerky” tendency to trigger the mouse unintentionally - don’t ask why and it’s not like I have neuromotor control issues in my hands.
Good to know! It’s very different than how I learned to interact with the roaster and the computer, but it might be something to learn in the future. For now, I downgraded to the old firmware and never get the Dead Man’s Switch anymore. It makes roasting much more enjoyable for me as I’m still new and want to watch the curves closely.
