Tiny Cheap Fluid Bed Roaster: Jan's technical story

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(Adding the following contribution by Jan van der Weel to http://kostverlorenvaart.blogspot.nl/2016/08/tiny-cheap-fluid-bed-roaster-by-tije.html)

Hardware and electronic design

(copied / merged from http://www.byleew.nl/coffee/simple-affordable-fluid-bed-roaster/)
Essentially the electronics for this design consist of a heating element, air pump, two relays and a temperature probe. The hardware design is inspired by the Roastuino project. In this project they used a simple heating element (heat gun), glass roast chamber and cheap (€ 12) but effective air pump. For the ‘electronic heart’ we used TC4 Digital Thermometer and Temperature Controller. The advantage of the TC4 is that it’s relatively cheap, programmable and it already has existing firmware to make it work with the Artisan roast software. After sourcing all the hardware, Tije manufactured the remaining parts and he also constructed the prototype. We used a very helpful wiring diagram (use at your own risk) that we found on the TC4 site to connect the electronics.
Firmware for the TC4
Without firmware the TC4 will not do anything. Luckily there are different firmware versions (Artisan Arduino Sketches) for the TC4 available. First we tried the latest available aArtisan that we found on this TC4 site. The code was from 2013 and we somehow did not get it to work properly. On Github we found a more recent version (aArtisanQ_PID_6_0). After compiling the Arduino sketch made by Jim Gallt we got a warning ‘Low memory available, stability problems may occur’. Maybe the code needs to be optimised, but we just hoped it’s would not be a problem.
Second test
Last week, we tested the roaster again. The airflow and heating are nicely balanced. When using 100% power from the heating element, we were able to get 200 grams of coffee in first crack after just 4 minutes and 45 seconds. That means that the machine has lots of power. The prototype was able to communicate with the Artisan roast software. We could log the temperature and set the heating percentage. The AC fan control however didn’t work. This problem was solved by installing the newer firmware .
Logging noise

Next steps
More work needs to be done. Priorities are to configure the PID temperature control and to reduce the logging noise. Many thanks to everyone that have made this project possible. To be continued!
List of parts
Below you can see the list of the parts that we have used until now. When you add up all the costs you can see how it somehow got a little more expensive than we had hoped.
Table: List of parts
NumberComponentsQuantityOrderEuro (ex shipping)
1Fotek SSR 40 DA1Ebay4.15
2Crydom d2425-101Ebay25
3AC zero cross detector1mlgp-llc.com21.5
2TC4 SHIELD1mlgp-llc.com79
3Silverchrest Air Pump1Ebay12.9
4Ceramic Heat gun element 30 Ohm1Aliexpress?0
5Laboratory heat resistant glass (90 mm x 2.5 mm x 200 mm)1Lgsbv.com79
6Funnel (inner diameter 97mm)1?7
7Heat resistant kit (Uni Acryl AC 180)1Kachelmaterialenshop.nl12.2
8Jumper wires1Ebay0
9Tube mounting brackets1?0
10Wood1?0
11K-thermocouple (miniature)1tcdirect.nl22
12262.75


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