Reality check for the fan replacement project...

What should have been a minimal task to replace the exhaust fan motor turned into a medusa that left me frozen no matter which way I turned. And the issue wasn't really the fan motor, it was the firmware. I think. Mmmm... I suspect. Or not.

The fan arrived on a Friday sans mounting screws so I lost another week waiting for the missing parts. Replacing the motor eventually took less than 5 minutes (no exaggeration) and the roaster started up without issue. Well... except I had updated the firmware (the machine level instructions that make the roaster operate properly; I abbreviate it as f/w). Basically I was frustrated by waiting for parts and realized I had been ignoring an update for a few weeks. So I ran the RoasTime software which contains the f/w update routine.

Other Bullet owners have had an issue updating the f/w but my early copy of RT3 (3.1.8.0) apparently has a fix for that so I buzzed thru it without issue. I had thought what I d/l'ed was f/w venison 572. When the fan looked like it was working with the new motor I did the required fan speed calibration and learned there are 2 settings for using the newly calibrated fan: bL-16 for the version 1 motor and bL-26 for the version 2 motor. And the motors are significantly different internally. The V2 motor has significantly more poles in the DC motor design than the earlier 4-pole V1 DC motor. And that figures in what followed.

The instructions said to run the calibration from a certain place in step 6 of f/w setup. I did that but the time required was about half the predicted 5 minutes. And the results were less than spectacular. The first roast appeared to not respond to controls as expected and the second roast had an A-01 error: fan not working. I floundered around variously re-running calibration, downgrading the f/w back to the "stable release" (going back to f/w 562 isn't permitted), running more calibrations, re-reading the instructions, finally upgrading the f/w again to version 579. Hey, wait a minute... didn't that say 572 before? Well the truth is I dunno. I asked tech support but didn't get an answer (the unspoken response may have been "how would I know? that all happens in Thailand and they don't tell us in Taiwan squat!").

F/w installation buzzed thru without issue again. I ran calibrations again. And then repeated the calibrations over and over with no apparent change except now the calibration routine was taking about 5 minutes. Yeah- just like it's supposed to!

Encouraged I ran a couple roasts and they went fine. And no A-01 error. So I did a couple more roasts and they went fine too. The roaster was operating like it used to except the exhaust fan sounds a little different (probably the motor vibrations are different because of the different design).

Then I started thinking (always a dangerous pursuit!). "What if I didn't have the f/w setting in step 6 set properly? Like maybe I set bL-26 for the new motor except I still had the old V1 motor? Oh crap. Maybe I didn't need to change the motor in the first place!" And on and on. Of course that kind of thinking leads no where productive. 

I have to deal with a roaster that has been upgraded to a V2 exhaust fan motor and do a few changes to Recipes because the airflow for a given fan setting may be different now that the fan is working well. Time to move on and deal with hurricane force winds from the new fan motor...




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