Kiln Controller Bartlett Genesis LT-3140

[Norm Stuart]

I just installed the new Bartlett Genesis LT-3140 kiln controller in our kiln and are validating the first firing with "witness cones".

If anyone has any questions on the Genesis Cone Fire controller I've played with it enough to know what it can do.   The Genesis is a pretty impressive advance over the Bartlett V6-CF controller, let alone more primitive controllers like the RTC-1000 or the 3-key Model 3K.

Fortunately our kiln controller in our outdoor kiln died one week ago after 7 years of use, which was a Cress modified V6-CF. This provided us the opportunity to upgrade to the new Genesis controller for $329

Bartlett Genesis Website

The Genesis is pictured with "Novice Mode" off. In Novice Mode the "Edit" button becomes "View".

We also purchased this $34 amperage detector from Bartlett which is a tiny circuit board you connect to the kiln controller and has two white leads connecting to a ferrite ring.

You thread one 220 volt power lines from each relay to the heating elements through the ferrite ring, which measures the power being consumed.  This allows the controller to compare your current power draw to the original power draw when you installed the elements or in our case when we installed the controller.

The controller tests the elements for about 60 seconds prior to each firing.  A decline in amperage used is charted to determine your element aging and any sudden decline indicates the failure of an element.

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The Genesis controller also has an attached WiFi card to download new operating system updates from the Bartlett website adding new capabilities to the controller. We don't have WiFi at our studio so I  set-up a hotspot on a mobile phone and connect the Genesis controller to the hotspot - the WiFi password is usually your mobile phone number.

Dave Bartlett told me the first update will add copy and paste to program entry, the second update will give you the ability to choose any slow-cool program to a cone fire. Currently the slow-cool option is 150 F per hour between 1,800 and 1,500 F as suggested in "Mastering Cone 6 Glazes".

All programs are editable with "Novice Mode" off. Switching to "Novice Mode On" makes it very easy for less experienced people to fire the kiln perfectly without much more than 60 seconds of training. The limitation is you cannot change the hold time or slow-cool for a firing in Novice mode, it remains what it was the last time you saved that program with Novice mode off. In Novice mode you can add pre-heat time and also fire now or delayed.

If you're familiar with previous "Custom User Programs", to load them you had to tediously press Enter as each step was displayed, leaving you pressing enter 26 or 36 times until the kiln was in ready mode. With Genesis you click load, choose the program name, then fire. You can give each of your custom firings their own name, rather than "User 32" which happens to be is the maximum number of custom programs you can store.

[Norm Stuart]

Your Genesis controller communicates only with Bartlett's server via the WiFi card and your internet router, both for firmware updates and firing progress.

The free "Molly's Kiln App" on iTunes and the GooglePlay store in turn also connects your phone via the internet to the Bartlett Server, for which you need a User Number and a Password to access the information your kiln is sending back to Bartlett.

I have asked Dave Bartlett for an ID (which I think is our board number 0051) and password for our controller but have not received them so I assume it's not yet ready for general use. We were in the midst of doing test fires to help them revise the firing control at the time to make it universally adaptable so Dave was otherwise occupied.  If you get credentials from Bartlett for the Molly's app let us know so I can ask again for mine again.

With each upgraded firmware version the Genesis keeps acquiring new capabilities and will be a work in progress during its entire lifespan of ownership. When it comes to the point the Genesis is customized for kiln makers like Skutt, Cress etc, the firmware for those versions have historically been frozen as the kiln makers don't want to pay for customizing the continuing further software capabilities, and sometimes their "customization" is incompatible with the later firmware updates - so I always suggest people buy the un-customized version direct from Bartlett.

Joseph Fireborn said:

Has anyone had luck syncing their genesis controller to their phone? When I enter the information into the app and hit Add My Kiln it just locks up and does nothing. I emailed bartlett about it today.

[Joseph Fireborn]

Okay. I got mine working. I didn't use the Mollys App. There is a new app called Bartlett Kiln Aid.

I downloaded it, but I couldn't add my kiln from the phone application. So I went to bartlett's website and setup an account then add my kiln on the website. This then synced with my phone. I am now monitoring my firing via phone. Still needs a lot of features though.

[Norm Stuart]

Thanks for the heads-up Joseph. I signed up for a User ID and password on the Bartlett website and tried out the remote kiln monitoring.

https://www.bartinst.com/users/login

MollysKilnApp has indeed been renanmed Bartlett KilnAid. which is a more logical name. Once my email address was confirmed, registering our kiln serial number and MAC address was easy. It appear multiple studio members can be connected to the same kiln with different user IDs, although we didn't test that out.

Using the signin website above in a web browser provides more firing information than the phone app does - such as all three zones.

If you want the firing log you still need to download those directly from your kiln. Pretty nifty if we had WiFi at our studio.

To test it out I used my husband's phone as a hotspot to connect the kiln to the internet and I used my phone to connect to the Bartlett website and the Phone App. We just have to convince one of the nearby businesses to let our kiln logon to their guest network.

Joseph Fireborn said:

Okay. I got mine working. I didn't use the Mollys App. There is a new app called Bartlett Kiln Aid.

I downloaded it, but I couldn't add my kiln from the phone application. So I went to bartlett's website and setup an account then add my kiln on the website. This then synced with my phone. I am now monitoring my firing via phone. Still needs a lot of features though.

[Joseph Fireborn]

Ah nice! I didn't know we could get the log from our controller. I want to keep track of my firings and overlay graphs to monitor my elements. Thanks for that tip. Glad you got it working.

[Norm Stuart]

The controller saves the previous ten firing logs with two files in csv format. The error log aka Event Log and the Temperature Log. (Tip: Every time you start a firing then cancel it counts as one firing, so you can quickly wipe-out your firing history this way.)

Choose MENU,  CONFIGURATION,   EXPORT LOG FILE

This will set-up the server mode and will tell you the current IP address of your kiln and the current four digit code to enter.

Use Chrome (not Firefox) to connect to the IP number.

Your laptop or phone has to be connected to the same WiFi router / aka same local network as the kiln.

In the screen grab below, the IP number was 192.168.1.24/index and the Code was 4092

Type the IP number/index and enter. (Don't forget to add /index as I first did) You'll be prompted to enter the four digit code, then enter and you'll get this list of log files to click on to download one at a time.

Chrome is smart and takes the server response into account and it will not let you start a new download of the next file until the first download is finished after 15 seconds or so. Unfortunately Firefox allows you to start another download right away, jamming-up the Genesis server and you have to restart the process. Big temperature logs can take a minute to download because the baud rate of the log server is quite low.

The Genesis does not save the Date and Time when you shut it off. It updates this from the WiFi each time you turn it on. In the logs below you can see we had WiFi available only once when we turned on the kiln, so only one of the firings has a date.

Open these files with Excel or similar spreadsheet program. If you want to mark them up and change them, same them in Excel format.

Joseph Fireborn said:

Ah nice! I didn't know we could get the log from our controller. I want to keep track of my firings and overlay graphs to monitor my elements. Thanks for that tip. Glad you got it working.

[Joseph Fireborn]

This is fantastic Norm. Thanks sir for taking the time to show me this. I want to graph all my firings and overlay them on top of each other so I can see the gradual changes in my elements. This will work perfectly for that.

Much appreciated.

[Joseph Fireborn]

Norm, the downloading from the Kiln Connect screen seems to take forever. Is this normal in your experience?

Edit: Nevermind I missed that paragraph about the rate.

[Joseph Fireborn]

Yay! Now I can slowly add each firing to this graph and monitor elements through gradual time increases.

[Joseph Fireborn]

Here are my last three firings. I had a hold on one of them, but you can see how nice it is to compare. Beautiful stuff. Although I am going to increase my slow cool by another few hours I think.

[Norm Stuart]

Very nice. I can't wait to see it over time

Our Cress E-23 has power to spare to the point where the firing graph doesn't change until more than one large and one small heating element have broken. Once a third one goes, it can't get up to Cone 6.

[Joseph Fireborn]

Hah. That isn't the case I don't think with my L&L. Last time I noticed the firings increasing by 10-15 minutes. I will find out for sure this time though. Thanks for your help. I have shared this with others who have digital controllers. It is super helpful.

[Joseph Fireborn]

Norm,

I was thinking about what you said, and I started thinking about relay on and off duration over the entire duration of the firing.

If we could record each time the elements clicked on and off per firing we could easily chart element life. Because as they clicked on and off less and less each firing, it means the elements are having to be on longer and longer. That is the statistic we really need to measure duration and quality of elements. 

Do you think Bartlett could update their software and include that on the log?