Install Roastnet Factory and open it for the first time

Roastnet Factory is the desktop half of Roastnet. It records the roast curve live from your probes, logs every batch against a coffee, a machine and an operator, and tracks your green stock by deducting what you roast. It runs on the device your roastery already owns, costs nothing and works with or without an internet connection. This tutorial covers installing and opening it.

What you need

• A Mac (Apple silicon or Intel, macOS 11 or later) or a 64-bit Windows 10 or 11 PC. Linux is planned but not yet available.
• A Roastnet account if you want to sync the schedule, stock and profiles. Factory also runs fully standalone, so an account is optional on day one.
• A roaster or probe box you can connect to over USB, serial, MODBUS or the network, if you want live temperature curves. You can install and plan without one and add the hardware later.

Install on macOS and Windows

1. 1Open the Download Factory page on roastnet.com and choose Download for macOS or Download for Windows. The page shows the current version number under the button.
2. 2On a Mac, open the downloaded disk image and drag the Roastnet app into Applications. The build is a universal binary, signed and notarised, so macOS opens it without a warning. The app appears in your Dock as Roastnet with the window titled Factory.
3. 3On Windows, run the installer. If SmartScreen shows a blue prompt, select More info, then Run anyway, and follow the installer to the end.
4. 4Launch Factory. The first screen is the welcome screen: a short pitch on the left and a Connect to Roastnet card on the right.
5. 5Decide how you want to start. Paste a connection string and press Connect to Roastnet to pair with your account (the next tutorial covers where that string comes from), or press Use offline to start logging locally and connect later.
6. 6Read and dismiss the beta notice with I understand. Factory is in beta: updates ship often and everything you record is saved on the device first, so a bug never costs you a roast.

Your first look around

After the welcome screen, you arrive in the main app window. The left sidebar holds the eight screens you will use every day: Live Roast, Schedule, Roasts, Inventory, Green Beans, Coffee Profiles, Cuppings and Buy Green. The top bar shows which roastery you are connected to (or an Offline mode indicator), a question mark that opens Help & Guide, and a cog that opens Preferences.

Open Help & Guide first and read the Quick Start topic. It explains the setup order: add your coffees, receive your stock, add your team and your machines, connect your hardware, then build a schedule. If you open Schedule before the selection menus have any entries, the screen will look empty. Five minutes of setup saves a frustrating first roast, and the tutorials in this series follow exactly that order.

Appearance, units and language

Open Preferences and visit Appearance to choose a light or dark theme (or follow the system), set the density, and select Kiosk mode for full-screen roasting with no menus. The Language setting overrides the language Factory detected from your computer. Under Units, choose Celsius or Fahrenheit and Metric (kg) or Imperial (lb). Every screen, job card and chart follows that choice. Factory stores the numbers in canonical units, so a colleague using another setting sees the same roast.

Updates

Factory checks for a newer build when it starts. When one is published, a slim Update available banner appears at the top of the window with an Update now or Download button. Installation takes under a minute. The local database sits outside the app bundle, so an update never touches your roasts. The About pane in Preferences shows the exact version you are running, which is the number support will ask for.