HOWTO - Make a BrewPi Fermentation Controller For Cheap

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How are your sensors setup? Beer is in a thermowell in a bucket with how many gallons? Where is the fridge sensor? What heater are you using?

My guess is you are using some super heater, or your fridge sensor is too close to your heater...its showing your entire chamber heating up 20F(55F->75F) in like 3 minutes...

You may need to adjust your min heating time to be lower if your using a super powerful heater....theres a min time the heater has to be on which may be too long for you.

I am just using one of these

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003XDTWN2/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

They used to be much cheaper like $20...not sure why the price hike...
 
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Thanks for the reply. I think I found my problem...it seems that somehow my probe was not all the way in the thermowell, it was only a few inches down. I am think it was reacting way to fast an freaking the brewpi out. Once I found that and pushed the probe back down to the center of the wort it seems to have drastically gotten better.

Fwiw I use a cheap gfci'd hair dryer on the low setting. I have used them for years and they work great.. You can get them for ~$10.


Thanks for the help, I snapped some pictures of the setup so I will get them in here when I get some time.


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Yea that looks much better, i didnt believe your water could move temps that fast...
 
So this is kind of strange. My wiring is correct (I've rewired it 3 times) but brew pi is not seeing any devices.

What is the easiest way to start troubleshooting that?

I have a feeling it may be my wires themselves. I bought the pack that they sell for the arduino. They are female to female but I have connector pins to make them make. I am also thinking it may have something to do with my resistor. How is everyone connecting that? I attached with the female wires.
 
Devices as in temp sensors or the arduino itself?
 
Any Idea why, intermittently my script will stop, and using the panel will not start it? I have to putty in and manually start the cron(I think its called a cron) doing the sudo -u python..code
 
BrewerJack said:
So this is kind of strange. My wiring is correct (I've rewired it 3 times) but brew pi is not seeing any devices.

What is the easiest way to start troubleshooting that?

I have a feeling it may be my wires themselves. I bought the pack that they sell for the arduino. They are female to female but I have connector pins to make them make. I am also thinking it may have something to do with my resistor. How is everyone connecting that? I attached with the female wires.
Click to expand...

Try switching the temp probe wires (ground and data). I posted a link to the BrewPi forum that talked about this and rabeb25 had a similar problem (and a fried SD card)

Todd
 
BrewerJack said:
It ses the arduino, just no temp sensors or switch.
Click to expand...

I found it far easier to troubleshoot the wiring of the sensors by using the arduino IDE and serial monitor. You may want to try that. Also, switch the wires like was mentioned.

Cheers,
Jim
 
wapitiscat said:
Try switching the temp probe wires (ground and data). I posted a link to the BrewPi forum that talked about this and rabeb25 had a similar problem (and a fried SD card)

Todd
Click to expand...

This actually might be it. Even though the documentation says yellow is data, a user in the comments said yellow might be ground.
 
The fact you dont see the switch either though more is what worries me, independent of the sensors being wired right or wrong thats just a single wire to the Arduino.
 
Any idea why this is happening about every 5-10 minutes now..It rand for 24hrs straight with no issues, now I have to restart this every 5-10 minutes here is the error:
Apr 12 2014 14:00:23 {"BeerTemp": 64.74,"BeerSet": 64.50,"BeerAnn":null,"Fridge Temp": 58.98,"FridgeSet": 61.46,"FridgeAnn":null,"State":0}

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/brewpi/brewpi.py", line 669, in <module>
ser.write('l')
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/serial/serialposix.py", line 485, in wr ite
raise SerialException('write failed: %s' % (v,))
serial.serialutil.SerialException: write failed: [Errno 5] Input/output error
 
Its the USB connection to the Arduino crapping out....hmmm you may need to get the BrewPi guys help for that one...
 
Yeah I did some searching and found that as well. I swapped USB cables and seems to be much more stable so I'll give that a try thanks!


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If your using your cable near another bit of electronics like a PC you may also want to buy a USB cable with a ferrite bead on it to keep external noise from screwing it up.

Im not sure if a RPI puts out much EMI, but a full desktop or Laptop could.
 
Yea it seems to have been the panel mount USB I purchased for the project box.

On another topic, any idea how I can take this stream http://brewcam.noip.me/ and merge it with my public php page underneath the graph? I googled it but didn't find much, I also played with some code with no luck.

Thanks


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I'm currently fermenting in a chamber that has a small AC unit stuffed in the side and heat tape wrapped around the carboys. A Love TSS2 two stage controller does the switching. I tape and insulate the temp probe to the side of the fermenter.

Is there any reason why the BrewPi would not work with my setup? The only issue I see is that after the AC unit runs for a few minutes, the AC unit's internal thermostat shuts down the AC when the inside of the chamber gets to the set point of the AC unit's thermostat. It never seems to matter that the AC compressor has kicked off due to this, though, because my temps are always +/- ~0.5F. I assume the BrewPi will be a little more precise, but will it even work with the AC unit turning itself on and off? The BrewPi will think the AC unit is still running when it actually isn't. Will it figure this out and adjust accordingly? Has anyone tried this? Maybe just bypassing the AC unit's internal thermostat would solve the potential problem.

I have actually tried to bypass the AC unit's internal thermostat and it resulted in severe undershooting in my setup. The AC unit would cool the inside of the chamber too much before being turned off by the TSS2. The fermenter would then loose too much heat to the cold air in the chamber. If this were under PID control it would have probably been fine, but a simple on off switch was not hacking it.

Can you set temp offsets for the probes with the BrewPi?
 
I dont think you can do temp offsets, but if you can disable the thermostat again the BrewPi should be able to handle it properly and keep you from getting those extreme undershoots with its PID watching how fast your temps ramp down and turning the AC unit off early knowing that the beer will continue to drift downwards... Of course a thermowell is ideal if your trying to be precise. The side works fine, especially for things like the STC/Johnson/Love controllers that will always have some inaccuracy do to over/undershoot but if your looking to get your beer to exactly 62F +- .1F find a way to get a thermowell down in there, either with one of those carboy caps or if you use buckets its easy to drill another hole in the lid the same size as your airlock hole, throw another drilled stopper in there and shove a thermowell down the stopper for a snug fit.

It may not work if the AC unit is turning itself off, it may throw the PID algorithm off as it thinks its cooling but its not.
 
I don't know if I was clear. The question about temp offset was totally unrelated to the rest of my post. Sorry. I have "calibrated" or offset all of the temp sensors I use for brewing to one thermometer, my Thermapen, which I assume is the most accurate. My Love controller and my Auber PID that I use for mashing have temp offset options, so if the temp sensor does not read accurately you set the offset to + or - however far it's off. The Auber PID required significant offset to match the Thermapen and the Love controller's probe required less. Do you trust the temp that your temp sensor is showing or have you checked it in a water bath with a known good thermometer and set an offset so your BrewPi displays the actual temp?
 
The Thermapen is +-.4C accuracy, and the DS18B20's are +-.5C accuracy so there really isnt much difference.

So i trust them just as much as my Thermapen because we are only talking a difference of 32F or 32.18F assuming both were at their maximum offset.

If you were really anal though and believed your Thermapen more or wanted to "calibrate" it yourself in boiling/ice water you could just make sure to offset your temperatures when setting..if you know its .2F higher than it should be just set your chamber to 63.8 instead of 64 in BrewPi...

I just looked and there is no way to set an offset, the probes are assumed to be ideal.
 
Hey brewers!

I got mine in a project box and working! I put the actuator and the Arduino in the project box with the USB cord leading out. The RaspberryPi will be mounted to the side of the project box. I didn't want it inside because it is always the one piece I have problems with.

Here are some photos:



 
A friend of mine gave me a raspberry pi model b but with 256 instead of 512. Will this version be able to handle brewpi? I'm also planning to buy a new pi (512) as I want to use one as a media centre and one for brewpi.


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BoulderBayBrewing said:
A friend of mine gave me a raspberry pi model b but with 256 instead of 512. Will this version be able to handle brewpi? I'm also planning to buy a new pi (512) as I want to use one as a media centre and one for brewpi.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
Click to expand...


It should work fine with the Rev A boards, however the Rev B boards are much better and the software will install much quicker by being able to load more into memory.
 
Thanks for the info. I don't have the pi yet, but I'm told it's rev b but with 256 mb ram. I'm okay with it being slower to load, so it sounds like I'll use this for brew pi and get another one to run raspbmc.

Cheers!


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Yea its just a webserver really anyways, sure there's a bunch of graphical crap and addons but nothing crazy...i dont think the 256 version should have any issues. I'd be surprised if Apache and Python took that much RAM.
 
BrewerJack said:
Hey brewers!

I got mine in a project box and working! I put the actuator and the Arduino in the project box with the USB cord leading out. The RaspberryPi will be mounted to the side of the project box. I didn't want it inside because it is always the one piece I have problems with.

Here are some photos:



Click to expand...

Looks good man! I really need to get mine in a project box asap.
 
FuzzeWuzze said:
The Thermapen is +-.4C accuracy, and the DS18B20's are +-.5C accuracy so there really isnt much difference.

So i trust them just as much as my Thermapen because we are only talking a difference of 32F or 32.18F assuming both were at their maximum offset.

If you were really anal though and believed your Thermapen more or wanted to "calibrate" it yourself in boiling/ice water you could just make sure to offset your temperatures when setting..if you know its .2F higher than it should be just set your chamber to 63.8 instead of 64 in BrewPi...

I just looked and there is no way to set an offset, the probes are assumed to be ideal.
Click to expand...


There is a calibrate command you can send to the arduino from the command line if you are good with that kind of thing.

http://forum.brewpi.com/discussion/448/temperature-probe-calibration/p1

If you aren't good with the command line I wouldn't recommend screwing around with this. But if you are, enjoy!


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I was interested in doing one of these and read some information that would turn me off from the idea. Is it true that the brewpi can't control active heating (i.e. fermtape, reptile tape)?

I have more use for the heating portion than cooling. My house is only above fermentation temperatures from Mid-May to Early October. I personally don't trust leaving passive heating in this application (i.e. light bulb in a paint can, blow dryer) and would prefer active heating.
 
I dont know that the tape would work as well no, it works by measuring the difference between the two sensors the "Fridge" and the "Beer". The only way i can think to get it to work a bit better would be to have your fridge probe be trapped up against your heating pad and insulated from the beer and ambient temp just like your beer probe on a STC would be insulated against a carboy or bucket if you werent using a thermowell.

As long as there's a measureable difference i would think it could do it, as in when the heat goes on it expects the fridge sensor to shoot up, followed by the beer at some slower rate that it figures out with PID as it goes.

That said, you should look at something like this
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003XDTWN2/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

They are great little safe heaters, with an on/off switch and like you i worried about these DIY heat sources that seem like a fire hazard waiting to happen. This has a built in thermal shutoff if it ever gets above 110F i believe, i've triggered it once when my STC1000 got stuck on somehow...so i know it works.
 
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I'm using the MyHeat method. I also figured out why the price spike. Its Amazon's pricing algorithm going to work.

At $19 it is sold out everywhere, so Amazon pumps up the price...
 
Yea now that its Spring in the US i think a lot of places stopped stocking it and are sold out....
 
Hey everyone,

Just wanted to show how I mounted mine. Everything (including the components in the project box) are mounted with velcro as an easy way to take it apart if needed.

I mounted it on the back of the chest freezer and ran the probes through the door. The seal still seals and I haven't had a problem yet.

I talked with Elco(sp?) over at brewpi on my placements and he suggested instead of the jug of water, I mount the fridge probe about 6 inches or so from one of the walls, hanging freely. So I have it hanging from one of the baskets that came with my freezer.



 
Good point, i didnt even realize thats what you were doing in that picture, i thought the free hanging one was your fridge and the one in the water jug was the beer probe for testing...

You definately need the fridge probe to be your actual fridge air temp so it knows when to shut off so it doesnt overshoot!
If its in water, your freezer will run for a very long time until that jug gets to temp and potentially put your beer way low.
 
Has anyone tried to submerge the DS18B20 directly into the fermentor? I have read reviews and talked to a few people that have done it with no issue.

It says they are waterproof, but it also said the wires were red, yellow, and black and mine were red, yellow, and green so who knows. I bought a pack of 5 so I may test mine and see.
 
By default they are most definately not, the bare sensors i mean... the ones you got have the sensor wired up inside the metal tip with shrinkwrap around them are but i would still highly highly recommend a thermowell....the plastic they make the wiring out of is likely not food safe.

If your going to put it into liquid try to not go past the metal tip maybe? The other issue is that the sensors maybe too wide to fit down a thermowell, so you'd have to figure out a way to test that...the thermowell's typically fit in a standard rubber stopper hole for airlocks, so its a bit smaller than that but if you can fit down that hole with your sensor and have a bit of wiggle room your probably ok..

This is basically what you need, but its out of stock and i cant find anywhere else that doesnt sell whole rolls for $50...

https://www.adafruit.com/products/1020

One of those 12" should be able to be split into two 6" parts to cover up the cord and make it food safe.
 
Thats what i use, i actually have some "6mm" probes i bought to test when i wrote this even though i dont use them currently.

I'll try and shove one down to make sure it fits...the math says it should, but its also from china so you never know if its really 6mm or not ;)
 
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