Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: A Digital Twin of my coffee roaster that runs in the browser

autoroaster.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 42 posts

Show HN: A Digital Twin of my coffee roaster that runs in the browser

#1

Post by jvkoch »

I built this website to host a data-driven model of my coffee sample roaster.

I realized after 20 or so batches on the machine that while the controls are intuitive (heat, fan, and drum speeds), the physics can be unintuitive. I wanted to use my historical roast data to create and tune a model that I could use to do roast planning, control, and to help me build my own intuition for roasting. This website lets you interact with my roaster in a virtual, risk-free setting!

The models are custom Machine Learning modules that honor roaster physics and bean physics (this is not GPT/transformer-based). Buncha math.

The models are trained on about a dozen real roasts. The default bean model is an Ethiopian Guji bean.

My next steps are to add other roasters and the ability to practice control/reference tracking.

Show HN: A Digital Twin of my coffee roaster that runs in the browser
autoroaster.com

Re: Show HN: A Digital Twin of my coffee roaster that runs in the browser

#2

Post by nxobject »

This is extremely fun to play with – congrats!

If you ever did a writeup on how your ML modelling worked and what real-life data you needed, I'd learn so much point of view of someone who's applied a little bit of control theory to robotics and aquarium controllers, but with traditional models. (Hell, I'd even pay $CUP_OF_COFFEE_PRICE for it, since I'd get that much learning time out of it.)

Also: you advertise custom models for roasters. But can you make a digital twin of my toaster?

Re: Show HN: A Digital Twin of my coffee roaster that runs in the browser

#6

Post by lukeinator42 »

very cool. If you're looking for machines to add, it would be awesome to model a cheap roaster based on a popcorn popper since it is probably less reliable than commercial sample roasters (and might benefit from less trial-and-error). During my undergrad I made an arduino-controlled popcorn popper that connected to the open source artisan software: https://github.com/lukeinator42/coffee-roaster.

Re: Show HN: A Digital Twin of my coffee roaster that runs in the browser

#7

Post by skylurk »

nxobject wrote: post #2

This is extremely fun to play with – congrats! If you ever did a writeup on how your ML modelling worked and what real-life data you needed, I'd learn so much point of view of someone who's applied a little bit of control theory to robotics and aquarium controllers, but with traditional models. (Hell, I'd even pay $CUP_OF_COFFEE_PRICE for it, since I'd get that much learning time out of it.) Also: you advertise custo…

I too am curious about the modelling methodology.

Re: Show HN: A Digital Twin of my coffee roaster that runs in the browser

#10

Post by jvkoch »

simlevesque wrote: post #4

I'd like to see you tackle the problem of figuring the opposite, let the user draw the curves and generate the inputs. Then I could replay with Artisan. Cool website !

Working on it! In fact, this was my original goal; Model Predictive Control for my roasters. I've been able to get this working on a fluid bed roaster but I've yet to try it for my drum roaster. Stay tuned! I'm hoping to have a control demo posted on the site soon.
Post reply on HN