HOWTO - Make a BrewPi Fermentation Controller For Cheap

Continuing from this - I just removed all the devices and rebooted my Pi. When it came back up I seen two unassigned sensors with different values. I then setup those two sensors, hit apply and refreshed the device list. Now they look like this:



Both the values are null and my temperatures are blank.

 

I'd think you would want to give them a different function, they are both set to monitor beer temp.

[Edit] You posted again as I was making this reply. In light of your next post, I dont know. Check your probe connections, try resetting, etc... Sorry, I'm sure someone else will chime in with the advice you need.

 

I think it was the power supply to my Pi. I pulled out my multimeter and while running everything the voltage was dropping down to 4.60. I switched to another power supply from an old smartphone I had and it was around 4.90.

Both probes are now giving me a temperature.

Now time to play with the relay -

 

Relay works great too - this is 100% operational!

Thanks for the great guide!

 

On device 2, change function from Beer Temperature to Chamber Temperature and click Apply.

 

Thanks for the reply.

Both sensors had the same value so if I changed one the other got those same changes. This is fixed now anyway -/needed to change my Pi's power supply.

 

What's beat practice for mounting this in an enclosure?

Should I mount the relay/receptacle in a different box as the rest or can it all be in the same?

Also what closure sizes should I be looking to pickup?

 

The relay can be in the same box as the pi. With respect to keeping the high voltage lines away from the signal lines to reduce interference. If you're using an ssr, heat will be an issue so that has to be taken into account.

 

Hoping someone can help, my table is about to break from me banging my head on it.

Having trouble getting my relay to work. It shows up fine in the Web interface and seems to be configured correctly. When the relay is supposed to turn on, I see the light for the appropriate relay illuminate, however it doesn't seem to cause the relay to close the circuit. I've double checked my wiring and haven't seen anything wrong. Also have switched out the relay to no avail. Any suggestions?

 

How hot can the SRR get while in the enclosure? Hot enough to melt the enclosure? Fire hazard?

 

Well it's not the same kind of load, but I have 3 in a large enclosure that run my keggles. All of them have heatsinks and there are fans in the box. One of them is inconveniently placed and doesn't get enough airflow. I've had to change it out 4 times from it popping.

 

Is it plugged into 3.3 or 5 v mine needed 5v to actually switch on the hardware the light would come on but it wouldn't actually switch at 3.3v, that's was the mistake I made as had the LCD plugged in so no other 5v socket available

 

Take a picture

 

Good to hear, power can be a fickle thing especially with all of these cheap Chinese things we get in the US now..5V doesnt mean you necessarily get 5V ...

 

Yes they can get so hot they malfunction and short and start a fire.

Make sure you have heat sinks and fans for SSR's or they will fail..whether they start a fire or just burn out is up to the gods that day. I wouldnt risk it. Especially with these cheap ass chinese SSR's that we seem to get everywhere in the US.

Some dudes SSR that failed in his hot tub..


I want to clarify though that the relays on the Relay board module for the arduino i recommend uses mechanical relay switches not solid state relay switches which do not require anything.

For our use case honestly a mechanical relay is fine, SSR's primary advantage is speed in switching which we dont care about, as welll as probably number of toggles its rated for before it dies. But the relay(each, so hot and cold) is rated for 100k switches at max voltage, thats literally your cold relay switching 50 times a day, 365 days for over 5 years. In real use of brewing a single mechanical relay can last you many decades and is more likely fail from something else like a power surge.

I'll stick to using mechanical for these situations and leave SSR's for where they shine, in electric HERMS/RIMS systems where you need to rapidly switch power on and off dozens of times per second to your heater coil to get your temp right.

 

Scary, I'd like to know what actually caused that and what we can do to prevent it? Was it bad wiring, poor quality ssr, poor quality something else in the box, poor attachment to the heat sink, etc?

The guy that posted that on morepage.com mentions that he's seen that a few times, I'd hate to think that if we did everything right there is still a decent chance that could happen.

 

Sadly SSRs fail closed. Then overheat and melt. All mine turned into mozzarella cheese

 

All of them?! We're they at least cheapo ssrs from China and we could blame it on that?

 

Well of course.

By all of mine, I meant all the ones that have failed. I've got 2 and an ssvr that have never had any issues.

 

Do you have any SSR shopping advise?

 

But the best ones you can afford

 

Any one working on the DIY version of the new brewpi spark?

 

My relay doesnt seem to be relaying. Should I have lights on it? Its getting 4.98v. Brewpi does however say Temp control disabled and no matter what temp I apply it says "temperature control disabled. Fridge will not heat or cool but will still log temperature"

View attachment 1419206074014.jpg

 

If you display the Maintenance Panel, go into Device Configuration, enable the Read values check box, then click Refresh device list, do the probe channels return temperatures, or read as Null?

Cheers!

 

Values are inactive

View attachment 1419209965591.jpg

 

Oh sorry 0 and 1 read values.

 

Right, probes are clearly tracing and it looks like you have your cool and heat channels set up properly.

Did you try running something simple like Beer Constant?

Cheers!

 

Yeah I goto the beer consistent tab and its defaulted to 20F. I hit apply and status goes to "mode consultant set" for about 2 seconds then flips back over to "Temperature control disabled"

 

Wait. Its fixed! I guess it didn't like to 20F default I tried 53F and it popped on.

 

Don't mix up your fridge/beer probes or your graph will look like this

 

Glad its working for yah!

Cheers!

 

lol! Well, there really isn't much use for a 20°F setting in our world, and I reckon BrewPi knows that

I think that happens because the initial default setup is for Centigrade - where 20° would actually make sense. If you switch your initial configuration to Fahrenheit it doesn't change that 20° to its 68°F equivalent...

Cheers!

 

Hey guys - followed this awesome guide and got BrewPi running great with very little issues.

My question for you Linux gurus, I have the CanaKit USB WiFi dongle, and since putting Rasbian on my Pi (was using XBMC before) it seems that WiFi does not start automatically, and I have to remove and reinsert the dongle every time I reboot, the power goes out, etc. Is there something I need to configure to ensure WiFi starts at boot? The reason this is sort of an issue for me is because I built a custom enclosure for all the components, which involves me removing a cover each time I reboot.

Please let me know if you have any ideas?

Thanks
Greg

 

I don't seem to remember having to specifically setup anything to make wifi automatically start. I did however have to change from DHCP to static ip in order to make it automatically connect reliably.

http://docs.brewpi.com/installing-your-pi/rpi-setup.html#setting-up-a-static-ip-address

 

I found some info and got it working. Basically changed the wpa-roam to wpa-conf in /etc/network/interfaces

Seems to connect to WiFi during boot now.

Thanks!

 

Cool. Would you mind linking the info you found?

 

Here is the link I used..

http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.co...eless-network-automatically-on-boot-up-how-to

 

Last I stopped the script and this morning at work I wanted to show off and share with my coworker now I cant get the script running again. Where do I go to find out why it wont start. I'm at work so I dont have access to the laptop, only the brewpi page.

 

Why did you stop the script

 

I'm an idiot. I didnt see the 'Off' tab and I didnt want it to be switching and trying to maintain the temp in my garage with nothing plugged in to the outlets. So I clicked stop script.