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Eject mod for MaKomo
MarkJames
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Posted on 09/29/2014 2:57 PM
You were interested in my eject mod so I opened up my HT and took some pics.

This is definitely NOT my tidiest work ever. I started, restarted, changed, rechanged, and totally reworked my goals, methods and equipment so many times with this it turned into a bit of an embarrassing mess.

Here's my HT with the back removed. I earlier posted that it was a model B but it is, in fact, a model A that I upgraded to model B. It's been taken apart so many times now that it's now held together with #6x5/8 SS sheet metal screws.

The little piece of PCB you see mounted to to the housing on the right is just there so I can separate the housing from the internal mod and also from the external controller.

i.imgur.com/oUmT3rF.jpg

Next I've removed the front control panel. The red wire you see running horizontally across is just the LED that indicates when the TC4 heat element is on. I mounted it in the middle of the 'o' in roaster. The two white wires are soldered to the pads of the eject switch

i.imgur.com/AWwHzqK.jpg

I've removed the PCB that holds the LCD and buttons so you can see where it's connected. The solder points are covered in hot glue so they look a bit odd. Without the glue the wires are easily pulled loose.

i.imgur.com/Kij4FFm.jpg


In this image you can see the Arduino/TC4/HTI boards mounted inside the HT. There's a piece of PCB piggybacked to the TC4 - that's where the connection for the eject (and my buttons/lcd controller/etc) are.


i.imgur.com/4LHxHTt.jpg?1[/img]<br /> <br /> Here's a view of the piggyback board. The black cylinder on top is the 5v relay that I use to trip the eject circuit. The other connections on it are for the bean loader, the LCD, and power.<br /> <br /> [img]http://i.imgur.com/voOTDof.jpg
Edited by MarkJames on 09/29/2014 3:10 PM
 
MarkJames
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Posted on 09/29/2014 3:00 PM
Here you can see the piggyback board. The black cylinder on top is the 5v relay to trip the eject circuit along with the power and i2c connections for the LCD and the servo connections for the bean loader

i.imgur.com/voOTDof.jpg

It's not the tidiest thing in the world but it works.

I'm told you are involved with Artisan. It's a beautiful s/w package. It would be a simple matter for you to allow users to trigger a mechanism like this at the end of roast or a bean loader after preheat. I might have stuck with Artisan if I could have had that functionality - in retrospect I should have just approached you first. Rewriting all the TC4 code to make mine work was a lot of rehashing something that you had already done better.

Mark
 
MarkJames
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Posted on 09/29/2014 3:20 PM
cont'd ... the edit time elapsed...


While I love the functionality of Artisan I went ahead with my own for a few reasons - many of which may not be of any concern whatsoever to most users.

First for me was I wanted the beans to load automatically. I've gotten over a thousand roasts from my HT and I betcha I've forgotten to load the beans 100x then had to wait for the drum to cool and start over. Not only that - with the thermocouple firmly mounted to the bulk of steel on the back wall of the model A you really do need to let it cool ALL the way down or your profile will be whacked.

Second was I didn't want to have to take my laptop out to roast every time. I used to roast indoors but the smell is just too much. I was able to isolate it and eject all the smell with an elaborate hood system but I found it very cumbersome to set that up every time I roasted. Moving my roaster outside under an awning made life easy. So a standalone system was required.

I do note that the TC4 software has the option of printing to an LCD display - but not all the information that I wanted/needed.

Third was the inability to eject. I was actually pretty surprised at this when I got my HTI. I emailed Jim but he was quite clear that eject was not in the works. I'm not sure if that was a safety issue for him or if there was simply not a way to trigger the eject other than the hackenstein way that I did.

All of my concerns (save for taking my laptop out each time) could be addressed by adding some simple messaging commands to the Artisan/HTI set. That would open up a world more of home hacking possibilities for the HT using Artisan as the front end.

Mark
 
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