Joseph Fireborn Posted February 10, 2018 Report Share Posted February 10, 2018 In order to gather information about your firings, you are able to connect to your genesis controller. The controller will hold the last 10 firings. The information it stores is the firing logs on temperature and the event log. To access the data your controller needs to be connected to wifi and you need to be on a device on the same wifi connection. Go to your kiln and hit Menu -> Configuration -> Export Log File This will enable a server mode where your kiln has to remain until you are done accessing the data on your computer. The screen will give you an IP address and a four digit code. Go to your computer and open a browser, type in the IP address and then it will provide a prompt for the code. Type in the prompt and you will get a screen that displays your last 10 firings, with temp log and event logs. You can download them one at a time. Do not try to download more than one as it hangs up the kiln controller which is a very basic server setup and can only handle a very small amount of data. It takes a good minute or two to pull off a single firing log. So be patient until the download finishes or you will lock up the kiln controller and have to restart the process. Once you have downloaded the data you can do whatever you want with it. I built some graphs in R that I will use to monitor my firings over time and see how my kiln is gradually slowing each firing down as my elements wear out. I am sure you could do other stuff with it as well maybe, but I am not sure what. Here is an example of what temp log looks like: Time is in half minute intervals. So in order to get the hours you need to take the total time, divide it by 2, then divide that figure by 60. For example one of my firings is 2184 observations, which is 2184/2 = 1092 minutes / 60 = 18.2 hours. The temp one and temp 2 are my TCs. I am not sure what out2 and sp mean. I need to email Bartlett about those. Here is a graph of my last three firings with one offset for the hold of 30 minutes to line up the plots. As you can see this data is really useful to see how your firing is changing over time. When I get to the point of changing my elements I will make sure I post my entire graph so we can see the difference of the last 100+ glaze firings has degraded the elements over time. I single fire most of the time so I won't be recording bisque firings. Anyways, just thought those of us who have the digital controllers would be interested in seeing what you can do with the data. Enjoy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
High Bridge Pottery Posted February 10, 2018 Report Share Posted February 10, 2018 I would guess sp = set point, dunno about out2. Could be to do with the PID value, if it overshoots the setpoint does the out2 go negative? Makes me wonder why they don't graph it live while firing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joseph Fireborn Posted February 10, 2018 Author Report Share Posted February 10, 2018 I think you are right. SP is setpoint, probably the rate that the firing is set to go at, and the temp is the actual value from the TCs. Good spot sir. In my data, it never overshoots the set point, so I am not sure if it will go negative. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
High Bridge Pottery Posted February 10, 2018 Report Share Posted February 10, 2018 If it seems to match up with how far away the temps are from the set-point then it makes sense in my head. Also seems a useful thing to log. What is R? Just some simple graphing software? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joseph Fireborn Posted February 10, 2018 Author Report Share Posted February 10, 2018 R is a data programming language. It is my focus in college and what I plan to work with when I graduate this spring... finally. It lines up with economics and more specifically econometrics, which is using data to make predictions and understand the values of each prediction and how much each regressor effects the overall prediction. It is also used for machine learning. It is open source and has with a beautiful IDE called R Studio. R has a package called ggplot2 which is what is used by almost all major data scientist to make beautiful graphs. It is the most used tool in the data world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neilestrick Posted February 10, 2018 Report Share Posted February 10, 2018 Thanks for posting this! As element wear in a digital kiln, you won't see any difference in the graphing until the elements get bad enough that they can't keep up with the schedule. Before that, the controller will simply keep the elements on longer to compensate for their lower heat production. By the time is shows up in the graph, it may be that they are really worn and should have been changed before that. I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how it actually happens. Where you will see the change in elements is in the cost per firing function. As the elements age and the controller has to keep them on longer to compensate, you'll see your firing costs go up. So you may want to chart that as well. It would be easy enough to write that down and plug it into a graph after each firing (I'm assuming that isn't downloaded with the rest of the info?). With that info you could calculate how much deviation of the firing cost is acceptable before it becomes cost prohibitive to run old elements. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
High Bridge Pottery Posted February 10, 2018 Report Share Posted February 10, 2018 Interesting, seems a bit like python. Makes me want to start back up my controller project but I keep opening it up and forgetting where I actually got to in the process I like python and using matplotlib, there seem to be a lot of data scientist using python but maybe that is because I watch a lot of python related videos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joseph Fireborn Posted February 10, 2018 Author Report Share Posted February 10, 2018 @neilestrick how does one chart firing cost? I was assuming that firing times would gradually increase over the lifetime of my elements, but it makes sense that the kiln will just kick on the relays more often to make up for their wear and tear. I need to download the other event log to see what all it provides. I might do that later this afternoon. I emailed Bartlett about what the out2 means in the last column. I wonder if they could add a log for the relay on and off and the time duration for each. That would allow us to easily see wear and tear in the elements per firing as you could record the number of times relays clicked on and off by the total time of the firing, the longer the elements are on combined with element clicks decreasing, the more the elements are wearing I would presume? When they get back to me about out2 I will ask them if they can think about providing us with that information in the firing log. I am doubtful, but it would be super useful. @High Bridge Pottery Python is plenty good at data, but that isn't the main use, you can use the data packages provided with python to do some pretty powerful stuff. R was basically built completely for data and not really anything else. Python and R are both excellent languages, they were just made for different things. I like python a lot, it is a fantastic get stuff done without stuff getting in the way language. I have the most experience with C# though, but I like R for what it does. Why did you stop working on your kiln controller project, you were making a lot of progress weren't you? Did you just get bored? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
High Bridge Pottery Posted February 10, 2018 Report Share Posted February 10, 2018 I got to a point where it is usable to fire a kiln besides overshooting the set point badly so lost some drive as I hit a natural stop of it somewhat working. The next step to work out how to fine tune that seems complicated and put me off a little. I will get back to it. I always find the hardest bit is getting motivation to sit down and start, once I start I get really motivated but I struggle to force myself to do the first step of sitting down. Also the kiln is in my bedroom and I don't actually want to fire it properly to save slowly poisoning myself or burning down the house. Been looking at moving house so lots of other stuff going on with that, need a space with a dedicated pottery room or shed. It is not exactly the safest setup Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neilestrick Posted February 10, 2018 Report Share Posted February 10, 2018 2 hours ago, Joseph F said: @neilestrick how does one chart firing cost? I was assuming that firing times would gradually increase over the lifetime of my elements, but it makes sense that the kiln will just kick on the relays more often to make up for their wear and tear. I need to download the other event log to see what all it provides. I might do that later this afternoon. I emailed Bartlett about what the out2 means in the last column. I wonder if they could add a log for the relay on and off and the time duration for each. That would allow us to easily see wear and tear in the elements per firing as you could record the number of times relays clicked on and off by the total time of the firing, the longer the elements are on combined with element clicks decreasing, the more the elements are wearing I would presume? When they get back to me about out2 I will ask them if they can think about providing us with that information in the firing log. I am doubtful, but it would be super useful. I'm not at my controller so I can't tell you exactly where it is, but there's a setting where you can put in the KwH pricing and it will calculate the firing cost. There's also a place where it tells you the total relay actuations. It's total for the relays, not per firing, so you'd have to math it out after each firing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joseph Fireborn Posted February 11, 2018 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2018 2 hours ago, neilestrick said: I'm not at my controller so I can't tell you exactly where it is, but there's a setting where you can put in the KwH pricing and it will calculate the firing cost. There's also a place where it tells you the total relay actuations. It's total for the relays, not per firing, so you'd have to math it out after each firing. Ohhhh. This is good information. I can manually do it after each firing as I have to go put the kiln in data transfer mode anyways. I will look into this. You would think they would just put this information in the firing log though. I will post that stuff when I figure it out this week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joseph Fireborn Posted February 11, 2018 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2018 @High Bridge Pottery Ahh. Well just getting it to fire with some type of schedule is a huge achievement. Great work there. I am sure once you get situated everything will come flooding back to you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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