Ok this is pretty crazy...kind of gets me to thinking what would be interesting to make in a roaster/popper. I'm actually going to be using a bread maker to roast coffee next because the air popper doesn't make large enough batches....
That's what I'm doing, -heat gun + probe thermometer, but with the bread maker instead of dog bowl. I own a bread maker that never gets used already, and it has an automatic arm that stirs the beans during the roast so you don't have to do it manually. I can just mount the gun above and pretty much stay hands off the whole time if keep the temp consistent. I'll probably have to move the gun manually though to adjust the roast profile, but if I get good results with a steady heat setting, then I'll rock it that way I'm sure. I'm gonna drill into the side of it to mount the thermometer. They even have open source software that records the profile, -but I don't know that I'm that geeky about it. Yet.