Feature Preview: Zooming Log

Lately I've been developing some software that I hope will both reduce my need for paper records and make it easier to analyze the records that are created in the normal course of a coffee roasting operation. The part of this that is farthest along is a data logging application that supports annotating the time temperature log with control changes and sample numbers. This is a simple program intended as a prototype to help me figure out how I want this to work, but it's better than the notebook and pen I was using as a manual data logger so I've been using this prototype daily.

Today I finished writing and testing a feature that I call the zooming log. Previously the log would display all of the measurements it kept. If I had it keep every measurement, I could only see about four seconds of temperature data at once. That isn't very useful. If I asked it to keep fewer measurements, I was throwing that data away with no chance to recover it later. With the zooming log, every measurement is logged, but I can choose to see every measurement or only one measurement every 1, 5, 10, 15, 30, or 60 seconds. Measurements with an annotation are displayed with millisecond precision in all of those views and it is easy to switch from one level of detail to another even during the roast.