HOWTO - Make a BrewPi Fermentation Controller For Cheap

Yeah, I knew adding the buck would change the configuration and think it worth the effort. I'll look at it again and re-post

day_trippr said:

With all the whining about the BSS84 used on my shield design, THAT's going to be interesting

Click to expand...

I was NOT whining, I was sniveling and crying!

LBussy said:

I was NOT whining, I was sniveling and crying!

Click to expand...

Distinction noted

Here's a way to allow soldering the thermal pad on the buck: put a large-ish hole in the middle of the pad outline. Then after soldering the 8 gullwing pins you can flip the board over and flow some solder through the hole and onto the pad and let capillary action do the rest...

Cheers!

day_trippr said:

Distinction noted

Here's a way to allow soldering the thermal pad on the buck: put a large-ish hole in the middle of the pad outline. Then after soldering the 8 gullwing pins you can flip the board over and flow some solder through the hole and onto the pad and let capillary action do the rest...

Cheers!

Click to expand...

Has anybody tried using the oven and baking the board?I know when I put together my brewpi shield all of the resistors slipped about a 1/2 inch up off the board when I flipped it over to start soldering. I set the board on an empty soup can in the oven with the resistors pointing up and baked the board at 385f for 10 minuets and was able to push down the resistors with a wooded spoon.

Those were all through-hole resistors, and if you bend the leads outwards you can pin the body to the other side of the board so it won't go anywhere while you flow the solder through the holes...

Cheers!

day_trippr said:

Those were all through-hole resistors, and if you bend the leads outwards you can pin the body to the other side of the board so it won't go anywhere while you flow the solder through the holes...

Cheers!

Click to expand...

Homebrew might have been a factor.

Bigdaddyale said:

Homebrew might have been a factor.

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lol!
Irony. It's everywhere!

Today I wanted to check my brewpi from work and now (after more than 2 weeks of logging), I get a webpage which says:

403 Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.
-----------------
Apache/2.4.10 (Raspbian) Server at xx.xxx.xx.xxxPort 80

Any idea why this is the case all of a sudden? The IP of the raspberry is fixed so it should not have changed IP.. What are other possible causes?

I hope this did not change anything to the process, makes me a bit worried not being able to view the current temperature etc...

Sounds like your ISP may be blocking port 80 try switching your external port to 8080 and forward to Internal port 80

Should he still be blocking this when I turn of the firewall? I'm currently not at home so I can't test that much. I tried turning of the firewall of my modem and still no access.

The strange thing is that I have used brewpi for several brews, and now it's been running for the past 2 weeks without any changes to the raspberry.. So I'm looking for something that could have changed without my input?

EDIT: I looked it up, port 80 is not blocked

ISP changing your IP address maybe?

This has nothing to do with your firewall. It is your Internet Service Provider that is blocking that traffic. If you change your port forwarding (external) on your router then you should be ok.

lgbainbridge said:

This has nothing to do with your firewall. It is your Internet Service Provider that is blocking that traffic. If you change your port forwarding (external) on your router then you should be ok.

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His ISP is running Raspbian?

The IP address of my modem/router did not change (that's also the first thing I was thinking).

And why would the port forwarding would be blocked now and not before?

lgbainbridge said:

If you change your port forwarding (external) on your router then you should be ok.

Click to expand...

What do you mean by this? In the settings of my modem, I added the fixed IP address of my Raspberry Pi with ports 79 to 80 open. Always worked like this until now

I experienced this as well about a month ago. I should have investigated it, but instead did a power cycle. When it came up all was fine except I did lose the recording of the temps. So the temp graph looks funky.

Probably should review the syslogs.

When I get home this evening, that's the first thing I will try as well. Just see if rebooting the Raspberry will help. Otherwise I will need to check what's going on.

I found the problem

After a reboot, the pi completely stopped working, apparently the SD card crashed... Worst that could happen.. Lucky for me I'm already cooling the beer so I don't need the control anymore.

Something changed. 403 is a Forbidden response from Apache. Something in your .htaccess has changed since the last time it worked.

LBussy said:

Something changed. 403 is a Forbidden response from Apache. Something in your .htaccess has changed since the last time it worked.

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Like mentioned above, my SD card is dead after a reboot. Probably at that point some files might already been affected.. Explaining why something "changed" without my input

KLucky_13 said:

I found the problem
After a reboot, the pi completely stopped working, apparently the SD card crashed... [...]

Click to expand...

That's happened a few times here, latest one was just a week ago. System was kinda/sorta limping along with its mission (surveillance cams) and then went tits up on a restart with a totally FUBARd SD card.

That inspired me to make sure every RPi has an up-to-date backup SD card (files that may change - like my R'Pints database - are pushed to a NAS box nightly). So, minimum downtime...

Cheers!

yeah, I'm a bit pissed that I did not make a backup when I got everything working.. It took me 2 days to get everything running with the tilt hydrometer etc... Lucky for me, I copied the brewpi directory to a USB stick when I was setting everything up, so at least I still have the config files.

Lesson learned, I ordered 2 SD cards of the same type, I will set one up, export it to a .raw file and write that to the second SD card.

I'm bummed that I lost the logfile of my current brew.. I did not write down how I fermented it exactly (I had set a beer profile), since I was hoping to just print out the log file when the brew was ready

Thats so damn weird, ive been using the same Samsung SD card since i started this thread, reinstalled a few times but its never died and i treat the thing like **** lol.

I've had an SD card die in a Raspberry Pi zero twice now. Admittedly - same SD card, same Pi Zero, but yeah - in comparison, both the RasPi 2 and RasPi 3 have been rock solid for far longer.

All SD cards are apparently not equal.
I had dreadful problems with my first R'Pints/BrewPi machine with Sony SD cards. Every couple of weeks it would yack up a corruption.

With 5 RPi's here now I can't be chasing dead cards, so over the last year I've been fitting 16GB Samsung EVO Class 10 uSD cards, and I've yet to have one of those croak after almost a year in use so far. That last failure was the last of the Sony cards for me.

But I still keep a clone for each machine.

btw, the best live cloning program I've found for Wheezy is RPI-Clone at
https://github.com/billw2/rpi-clone
For Jessie the built-in SD Card Copier utility works great...

Cheers!

I've had two cards die in my BrewPi Python installation. They were old cards, but I blame the power supply. Now I have a more durable PSU the current card has been fine. Very hard to know for sure, but word on the street is that it's always the power supply.

Never bet the farm based on "word on the street"

While dirty or low voltage power can certainly cause problems with flash memory, I haven't changed any of the power supplies on my 'Pi fleet, just the SD cards...

Cheers!

day_trippr said:

Never bet the farm based on "word on the street"

While dirty or low voltage power can certainly cause problems with flash memory, I haven't changed any of the power supplies on my 'Pi fleet, just the SD cards...

Cheers!

Click to expand...

You're right, of course. But the popping sound and burning smell clued me in.

They are also very susceptible to bending damage, I kept one in my wallet for safekeeping for a short amount of time and while it looked perfectly fine and undamaged when I took it out and used it it almost set my laptop on fire,; it melted the SD to micro SD adapter card. Needless to say it couldn't be read anymore. I'm now super careful when handling these things!

So I have a quick question for everyone. Has anyone ever used Romex for the relay module to the outlets? It seems like it may be a good idea but I don't know if it is over kill or if it can screw into the terminals well.

Large-ish gauge solid copper can be a bit of a pita to use inside enclosures.
But it'll certainly work - perhaps better than stranded inside the screw terminals.
And if you don't have stranded wire of suitable gauge, proper gauge solid is definitely preferable vs going under-size stranded.

Cheers!

day_trippr said:

All SD cards are apparently not equal.

I had dreadful problems with my first R'Pints/BrewPi machine with Sony SD cards. Every couple of weeks it would yack up a corruption.



With 5 RPi's here now I can't be chasing dead cards, so over the last year I've been fitting 16GB Samsung EVO Class 10 uSD cards, and I've yet to have one of those croak after almost a year in use so far. That last failure was the last of the Sony cards for me.



But I still keep a clone for each machine.



btw, the best live cloning program I've found for Wheezy is RPI-Clone at

https://github.com/billw2/rpi-clone

For Jessie the built-in SD Card Copier utility works great...



Cheers!

Click to expand...

This is where I'm headed next for my installations.

Hello,

Hoping someone can provide some assistance.

I'm using a Raspberry pi 2 and and Arduino Uno. I have Raspbian Jessie and the Brewpi software installed and it runs (script runs etc..) However, I can not get a temperature sensor to be recognized no matter what I try. I bought a pack of 10 sensors on ebay here

If I connect the legs of the temperature sensor exactly how they are shown in the diagrams, my Pi gets the little lightning bolt symbol saying it has too much power draw and my mouse/keyboard stop working. I have an external 9V power supply for the Uno (which it seems is the standard voltage for an external Uno supply but I'm not sure that is usable in this application) but if I use that, the sensor will burn up.

I have used a new sensor for each test and have now hooked up the legs in every configuration possible. Other configurations do not result in the Pi showing too much current draw but the sensors still do not show up when I search for them.

Do I somehow have the wrong sensor (they have the same marking as the picture in the above ebay link). Have I damaged my Uno when I made the sensor smoke using the external power supply?

As far as my Pi power supply, I have tried several from various Android phones. A couple were rated at 2.1 amps which is the highest rated I have. Does anyone have any clue what I am doing wrong?

Thanks

A 9VDC wall wart is perfect for the Uno.
As for the sensors, this is the only way to wire them and have them work with BrewPi...

...with the DATA connected to Uno A4.

No idea if you may have broken your Arduino. There are sketches available for testing one-wire devices using the Arduino IDE.
Also, I don't understand why the RPi knows anything about how you are connecting the sensors to the Uno, at least with respect to power draw...

Cheers!

day_trippr said:

Also, I don't understand why the RPi knows anything about how you are connecting the sensors to the Uno, at least with respect to power draw...

Click to expand...

I'm guessing that the pi is powering the arduino via USB, and the DS18b20s are increasing the current draw juuuust enough to kick it over the power limit.

But he said he's using a wall-wart on the Uno, which cuts the power draw from the USB receptacle.
I guess he must've been trying with/without the wall-wart then...

Cheers!

day_trippr said:

But he said he's using a wall-wart on the Uno, which cuts the power draw from the USB receptacle.
I guess he must've been trying with/without the wall-wart then...

Cheers!

Click to expand...

Correct, have tried with and without the wall-wart. With the wall-wart I fry the sensor and without it I'm drawing too much current from the Pi (Pi shows the lightning bolt).

I found what appears to be a similar experience here and I'm starting to think I have fake sensors.

day_trippr said:

Large-ish gauge solid copper can be a bit of a pita to use inside enclosures.
But it'll certainly work - perhaps better than stranded inside the screw terminals.
And if you don't have stranded wire of suitable gauge, proper gauge solid is definitely preferable vs going under-size stranded.

Cheers!

Click to expand...

Im no expert, but i thought solid core wire in screw down terminals in general is bad practice? You dont really get much surface area of contact, easier for the wires to fall out without the compression you'd get squeezing stranded wires down.

If that was an issue you'd definitely want to disconnect every switch, outlet and circuit breaker in your home, because I guarantee every one of them has screwed down solid copper conductors.

Otoh...copper is incredibly malleable and it doesn't take much torque on the screw for it to get a solid bite - and keep it forever...

Cheers!

After about a year hiatus I brewed up my first batch and fired up my DIY BrewPi fermentation chamber. That batch fermented as expected and the fermentation chamber ran as expected.



I brewed again over the weekend and was surprised to find my beer temp 10 degrees cooler than it was set for. I thought perhaps I forgot to put the probe in the thermowell, when I got home that night I checked and the probe was in the thermowell. I then decided to stop that batch in brewpi and start a new beer. The temps went back to normal but last night it looks like things went crazy and my beer temps hit almost 80 degrees F.

View attachment 1479828183917.jpg

waverz said:

After about a year hiatus I brewed up my first batch and fired up my DIY BrewPi fermentation chamber. That batch fermented as expected and the fermentation chamber ran as expected.



I brewed again over the weekend and was surprised to find my beer temp 10 degrees cooler than it was set for. I thought perhaps I forgot to put the probe in the thermowell, when I got home that night I checked and the probe was in the thermowell. I then decided to stop that batch in brewpi and start a new beer. The temps went back to normal but last night it looks like things went crazy and my beer temps hit almost 80 degrees F.

Click to expand...

Wow. It sure looks like even though the relay for turning on your cooling device was being called, that it wasn't actually cooling for the first several days. Is the beer being cooled a larger volume than you've done before (larger mass to cool) or could it be that your cooling device wasn't working when being called? What are you cooling with? Do you have a build thread here?

Looking at the graph again, it looks like your fridge temp fluxuates 10 degrees. That seems to me to be a pretty big swing. Are your probes in anything (like a cup of water) or hanging in the air?

I also see that for most of the time from 20:00 to the next day 07:00 that the BrewPi is in "waiting to cool" mode instead of "Cooling".

Maybe there's a bug in the PID algorithm? Have you kept the software up to date? For the DIY BrewPi I think the latest version is 2.10.