CraftBeerPi - Raspberry Pi Software

[Ph03n1X1]

I have a question about temperature logic.... I have a Hosehead system (works awesome so far) but not sure what logic I am supposed to use for boil? Is there a way to have a rolling boiling with Craftbeerpi? I tried experimenting with the overshoot logic and whatnot but had a hard time figuring it out.
Do I just leave it on 213deg and have it always on?
What exactly is the overshoot logic by norm?

There are a couple PWM logic add-ons in pull request status. These are aimed at boil control. You can implement them manually if you want to test. They have been discussed earlier in this thread.

i have been testing mine with promising results, but on the 2 batches we did this weekend, we still had to babysit for boil-overs especially during the protein break.

 

[weesm]

I'm putting the final components on my Terragady 4.2 board and I was wondering if anyone could help by explaining what each component is doing? I some basic understanding of the hardware involved, but I'd love to learn more.

Some simple like the GIPO send the 3.3v signal through the resistors that does __ then the transistors do __, the diodes do ___ .

Here's the board design for reference:
v4.2 Terragady Board

 

[terragady]

there is no big philosophy, just read what resistors, transistors, diodes are and do and thats it! Wikipedia is good enough.

 

[weesm]

there is no big philosophy, just read what resistors, transistors, diodes are and do and thats it! Wikipedia is good enough.

Fair enough. I guess I should rephrase my question then. Why have resistors, transistors, and diodes at all then? Why not just have the GIPO pins connect directly to the block terminals?

 

[SHvanBommel]

To protect the pi, also; some cheaper SSR's don't react well when a low voltage is applied to the relay so typically 12v is a good signaling voltage.

 

[toadyus]

Thanks- Not my board but from my favorite board house. DirtyPCBs. And I can't thank you enough for the effort you put in designing this board.Thanks Dude

Boards weren't sourced from dirtypcbs and I don't think she's a dude..lol

 

[Bigdaddyale]

Boards weren't sourced from dirtypcbs and I don't think she's a dude..lol

Where did you have the boards made? They look like they did a good job.

 

[pr0woKator]

Hello,

I'm interested of your soft CraftBeerPi, but i have some question, it's totally free?
What componet's i need to connect heater and agitator?
I want connect 2 heaters (2 x 1750W), and 12v 10A Power Supply for aitator.
Do CraftBeerPi support toutch screen for raspberry Pi 3?

 

[Ph03n1X1]

Hello,

I'm interested of your soft CraftBeerPi, but i have some question, it's totally free?
What componet's i need to connect heater and agitator?
I want connect 2 heaters (2 x 1750W), and 12v 10A Power Supply for aitator.
Do CraftBeerPi support toutch screen for raspberry Pi 3?

This is all pretty well documented on http://web.craftbeerpi.com/. Please start there and then come back with any questions.

 

[NoahBeach]

I would contribute to this project if it had a true open source license.

I don't contribute to projects that prohibit commercial use or redistribution with changed code. That isn't open source.

What often happens with these sorts of projects is that the project "owner" takes the project back to closed source status after the community has made a lot of contributions.

I urge you to change the license on this project.

Same here, as brewman said, this is NOT open source. It's a great project, and a great product, but not open source. And since it is not I actually cannot contribute to the project as currently licensed due to IP agreements I signed with my company. If it was under a real open source licence, GPL, Apache, MIT, etc I would be able to. Shame, I guess I'll keep my modifications to myself

 

[stbernts]

Same here, as brewman said, this is NOT open source. It's a great project, and a great product, but not open source. And since it is not I actually cannot contribute to the project as currently licensed due to IP agreements I signed with my company. If it was under a real open source licence, GPL, Apache, MIT, etc I would be able to. Shame, I guess I'll keep my modifications to myself

Why not send Manuel an email? Maybe things will be sorted out?

 

[augiedoggy]

I agree that the cooler would have it's own control. We currently have that set up the same way now with arduino. We just don't want the glycol pump running continuesly. In your system does the pump run all the time or only when cooling is called?

you can use dual relays like I did to turn the pump on at the same time as the ball valve or soleniod valve is activated to be opened so coolant flows through the manifold.. been using my setup this way for a couple of years and it works well.

 

[divi2323]

Do any of you have a mounted LCD touch screen display for your panels? If so what do you use (model/part number) and how do you mount it in your panel?

 

[divi2323]

looking into how the ds18b20's are read in the rpi, they create a directory within the w1 tree for each sensor's address, and you can cat the w1_slave file out to read the sensor data.

i've been wanting to make my temperature probes wireless for a while now, and i think using my esp8266, and a ds18b20, i would read them using battery power. once they read it, I would use them to fire the data off into a web service that's running on apache on the rpi, and in turn would just write out to a file on the file structure in the w1 bus directory.

question is, does the cpbi software just read these values, or are they pulled from a different source? I'm no developer by any stretch but i've got enough knowledge to be dangerous. is there a different way to plug in to temperature that's written to a flat file on the file system and report that as your temp sensor rather than reading the sensor directly?

another option would be to fire the temperature data off into an IoT repository like thingspeak or any number of online drop locations, and then write a plugin for cbpi that would pick up that same data and consume it for control. obviously that would require a constant internet connection which might not be available, but either option seems feasible, no? the thought of wireless temperature sensors and decluttering my rig is quite sexy to me.

 

[Radboud]

Can someone tell me the viability of CBP as a replacement for Brewpi for fermentation control only? Brewpi can't handle my setup (heater + fridge), it doesn't get the overshoot for the heater correct which causes endless heating and subsequent cooling cycles which uses a lot of energy. I wonder if CBP can do better.

 

[terragady]

Maybe you need to setup it better? Or depends on room temperature just use cooler (or heater)? Check out also BrewPiLess project, seems to be BrewPi replacement with minimal cost.

 

[Radboud]

yeah, the advice that was given was to remove the heater when not needed, when I removed the device in the settings it somehow stayed on, heating the chamber. Luckily I discovered that on time but now I am a bit paranoid and I hate the idea of having to physically plug and unplug the heater every time. And my chamber at 68º is about 4º above ambient temps this time of year so it would be nice to have the heater available towards the end of fermentation without it causing the sawtooth.

 

[stbernts]

Maybe you need to setup it better? Or depends on room temperature just use cooler (or heater)? Check out also BrewPiLess project, seems to be BrewPi replacement with minimal cost.

Yup, but you still need to tweak PID settings. It depends on the freezer etc.

 

[gromitdj]

... my chamber at 68º is about 4º above ambient temps this time of year so it would be nice to have the heater available towards the end of fermentation without it causing the sawtooth.

I haven't seen you post anything in the DIY BrewPi thread, But my guess is that either your heater is too powerful for the space it's in, or your probe placement is not optimal.

If you can, upload a picture of what you've got, and possibly ask the question in that thread. There are a lot of people successfully using the BrewPi (including myself) and I'm sure it can handle your situation with some tweaking.

 

[day_trippr]

I haven't seen you post anything in the DIY BrewPi thread, But my guess is that either your heater is too powerful for the space it's in, or your probe placement is not optimal.[...]

^this^

Plenty of BrewPi users successfully run heaters inside their fridges/freezers, myself included...

Cheers!

 

[Radboud]

But I need an excuse to tinker with new stuff As my ferm. chamber is next to my brew stand it would be really cool to have CBP run everything.

 

[gromitdj]

I can certainly understand that, but BrewPi works so well once you have it dialed in; I can't think of anything that could handle the same function as well as it does.

 

[thestealth]

Got a terragady board and finally put it together last night. Can't wait to get CraftBeerPi up and running. I'll post some photos of the final setup when done.

 

[ultravista]

Is there a complete 'how to' to build one of these?

 

[boomerbrian]

looking into how the ds18b20's are read in the rpi, they create a directory within the w1 tree for each sensor's address, and you can cat the w1_slave file out to read the sensor data.

i've been wanting to make my temperature probes wireless for a while now, and i think using my esp8266, and a ds18b20, i would read them using battery power. once they read it, I would use them to fire the data off into a web service that's running on apache on the rpi, and in turn would just write out to a file on the file structure in the w1 bus directory.

question is, does the cpbi software just read these values, or are they pulled from a different source? I'm no developer by any stretch but i've got enough knowledge to be dangerous. is there a different way to plug in to temperature that's written to a flat file on the file system and report that as your temp sensor rather than reading the sensor directly?

another option would be to fire the temperature data off into an IoT repository like thingspeak or any number of online drop locations, and then write a plugin for cbpi that would pick up that same data and consume it for control. obviously that would require a constant internet connection which might not be available, but either option seems feasible, no? the thought of wireless temperature sensors and decluttering my rig is quite sexy to me.

It just reads the file that the sensor write to. You could always write that file yourself as long as you know the format

 

[Ph03n1X1]

Can someone tell me the viability of CBP as a replacement for Brewpi for fermentation control only? Brewpi can't handle my setup (heater + fridge), it doesn't get the overshoot for the heater correct which causes endless heating and subsequent cooling cycles which uses a lot of energy. I wonder if CBP can do better.

I have been using it through the last 3 batches I have fermented. It works great (with the exception of occasionally having to clear the temperature data file to get the chart back). I built it as a standalone fermentation controller, but you can definitely use it to brew and ferment both from the same rig.

I am using an old fridge with a $10 Walmart heater in it. It holds the temp within 1 degree very consistently and the step up/down methods work great.

I have never run BrewPi since just when I was looking at it CBPi came out with this functionality, but I love the CBPi implementation. I have pics of my setup if you are interested.

 

[raymondhthomas]

Is there an estimated date for the "official" board release? or any still floating around for ordering?

 

[toadyus]

Is there an estimated date for the "official" board release? or any still floating around for ordering?

I have a couple left and more on the way...If you're interested in a diy kit ($25 USD) or a completed / tested board ($45USD), send me a pm and I can ship one to you ASAP.

 

[SHvanBommel]

@raymondhthomas - official boards arrived today and are being put through their paces before we announce so they should be available in the next few days. If you want a terragedy board, toady has them. If you want to wait, the Facebook page is the place to keep an eye out for the announcement.

 

[thestealth]

Setup the software on the Pi and all I can say is good job Manuel. Since I will be running this Pi headless and using the web interface almost exclusively, I would really like to see if a button on the web interface to initiate a safe shutdown of the Pi. Otherwise I'll have to SSH or VNC into it to do so. Any ideas?

 

[SHvanBommel]

It's in the "about" section.

 

[thestealth]

It's in the "about" section.

Of course, in the one menu I did not open. Odd place to hide the shutdown feature though.

 

[SHvanBommel]

Yeah, I think so too.

 

[thestealth]

Finished wiring the insides of the panel today and did some basic testing with the software to make sure temps are read and I could manually activate the SSRs and relays. Looking at the temp control options I see there are many. Is there any info on how each one works? I'd like to figure out what one is best for mash temp control and also for boil control.

 

[divi2323]

Finished wiring the insides of the panel today and did some basic testing with the software to make sure temps are read and I could manually activate the SSRs and relays. Looking at the temp control options I see there are many. Is there any info on how each one works? I'd like to figure out what one is best for mash temp control and also for boil control.

Pics or it didnt happen.

 

[thestealth]

Pics or it didnt happen.

It didn't happen

But seriously, got most of it installed yesterday. A change in design requires me to add a third relay for a third pump and a third temp probe. I got some photos of the panel during its construction and installation, though none of the brewery. (its not my brewery, just helping a friend out) I will go back in a few weeks to finish up the missing stuff and take some final install pics to share.

In the meantime, here are some photos to satisfy the curious:

 

[divi2323]

the organization of people's wiring astounds me. If I was as anal as that, my circuits would never get built. VERY nice on the layout. Simple is best, i've always been a big fan.

 

[terragady]

I need such a box I found only small ones where I can't fit everything...

 

[thestealth]

I need such a box I found only small ones where I can't fit everything...

This is the box: link

And the steel panel: link

Also thanks for the wiring compliments. I find keeping it neat make troubleshooting easier when it is needed.

 

[LBussy]

Also thanks for the wiring compliments. I find keeping it neat make troubleshooting easier when it is needed.

Yeah but if you make it that neat, no troubleshooting will be needed. Where's the fun in that??