None, Zero, Zip experience with raspberry pi, etc. Help me :)

[gregkeller]

So I'm in the earlyish phases of planning my electric brewery. I've got most of the parts for my control panel and started to see stuff for raspberry pi's that intreagued me. I had planned on going with PID's, and most likely still will, but I've got a question.

Is there anything that a Raspberry pi can do that an old laptop can't? Hear me out. How hard would it be to set up something where an arduino controls my eHerms system, and the arduino wirelessly talks to my laptop or PC for me to control things from? Is this even possible? I figure it wouldn't work running windows 10 or something, but putting linux wouldn't be too difficult. Is it one of those things that is possible but a stupid idea for a reason that a noob like me wouldn't understand? Can the arduino not be outfitted with some kind of wifi thingamajig?

 

[golfindia]

Brucontrol. Set up a Win machine as a server.

Rasberry pi is less complicated and cheaper. Unless you need to do a bunch of valve and flow control automation.

 

[gregkeller]

Just came across that after I posted my question Seems like a pretty good option with lots of flexibility.

 

[augiedoggy]

Im playing with my first 2 pis now (to get them setup for taplist.io ) I also use brucontrol at home and at my nanobrewery (To be fair I was a betatester for brucontrol) I am not all that linux savy even though I use it on machines at work.. I keep reading how the pi can be unstable and its very strongly recommended to have a backup sd card with a backup image at all times. so far its been ok but ive had issues just getting the wifi to work (older pi 2b+ models and apparently my wifi adapters dont work out of the box)

The brucontrol setups have been reall good for me short of a single crash I had a few months back where I lost my configuration file in brucontrol and had to set everything up again...now I know making a backup of the file would have saved me a lot of headaches.
That said I love brucontrol enough to setup my business with it. from reading comments from others who used things like brewpi and switched to brucontrol the difference it the brucontrol software is more flexible and has support. I believe it may be more stable but Ive never used brewpi so cant be sure.

Not only do I use it with a 24" touchscreen for my 3bbl brewhouse (I do not have any automated valves or automation but will likely be using it for fermentation ramp profiles soon.)
I also use it with a second control box in our basement which controls our glycol and /heating system for our 4 fermenters. this is all controlled from the same software via tabs for a refurbished hp mini computer I bought for $100 on ebay.
Brucontrol will run on xp or newer software but it takes a but of additional software to use it on xp im told whereas vista and newer should work without additional work. the different hardware platforms and configuration possibilities with brucontrol are impressive I feel like after 2 years I still haven't scratched the surface of what I can do with it.

 

[Goowa]

Im playing with my first 2 pis now (to get them setup for taplist.io ) I also use brucontrol at home and at my nanobrewery (To be fair I was a betatester for brucontrol) I am not all that linux savy even though I use it on machines at work.. I keep reading how the pi can be unstable and its very strongly recommended to have a backup sd card with a backup image at all times. so far its been ok but ive had issues just getting the wifi to work (older pi 2b+ models and apparently my wifi adapters dont work out of the box)

The brucontrol setups have been reall good for me short of a single crash I had a few months back where I lost my configuration file in brucontrol and had to set everything up again...now I know making a backup of the file would have saved me a lot of headaches.
That said I love brucontrol enough to setup my business with it. from reading comments from others who used things like brewpi and switched to brucontrol the difference it the brucontrol software is more flexible and has support. I believe it may be more stable but Ive never used brewpi so cant be sure.

Not only do I use it with a 24" touchscreen for my 3bbl brewhouse (I do not have any automated valves or automation but will likely be using it for fermentation ramp profiles soon.)
I also use it with a second control box in our basement which controls our glycol and /heating system for our 4 fermenters. this is all controlled from the same software via tabs for a refurbished hp mini computer I bought for $100 on ebay.
Brucontrol will run on xp or newer software but it takes a but of additional software to use it on xp im told whereas vista and newer should work without additional work. the different hardware platforms and configuration possibilities with brucontrol are impressive I feel like after 2 years I still haven't scratched the surface of what I can do with it.

If I'm reading the brucontrol site correctly, they dont support raspberry pi at all with their firmware. They do say contact them if you have a different microcontroller, so i cant be sure. @auggiedoggy I presume then you are using some flavor of Arduino for your microcontroller?

 

[augiedoggy]

If I'm reading the brucontrol site correctly, they dont support raspberry pi at all with their firmware. They do say contact them if you have a different microcontroller, so i cant be sure. @auggiedoggy I presume then you are using some flavor of Arduino for your microcontroller?

the pi is just a linux pocket pc and not a "microcontroller" per say as far as im aware it may have I/O pins I dont know.. I use the arduino for the hardware and control panel and the brucontrol firmware goes on the arduino which talks to the brucontrol software on the pc. the brucontrol software requires xp or higher windows OS. I haave one control panel connected via usb cable and one via ethernet but theres a few wifi options too.

 

[golfindia]

Using the various software offerings (craftbeerpi, strangebrew) the R pi unit becomes a standalone controller. All your relays and temp probes get connected directly to GPIO pins. You don't need an arduino "middleman". Tell the software what pins get used for what and you're done.