HOWTO - Make a BrewPi Fermentation Controller For Cheap

1

 

Guess not, more of a taker than a giver I guess.

 

1. Your house should have breakers in the main panel. If your concerned about anything then use a gfi.

2. Look into the brewpi with lcd forum that day_tripper started up.

3. Probably as long as it's the same hd44... Blah blah whatever chip

4. If the fan pulls 1.6A I don't think it's a good idea. Try using a 3 amp or higher.

5. Not really. At least not yet. And this has been answered.

You can get pretty cheap 12v power supplies on Amazon and eBay that can be wired in instead of adding more bulk with the wall wart and extra receptacle.

Have you been to the community.brewpi.com forums with any of your problems?

 

Cool. GFCI isn't an option for me (I rent) and my kitch and bathroom are all on the same circuit, but this doesn't seem like a big deal. My current STC-1000 setup has no fuse and has never given me any issues.

Yeah, that's what I was linking in #3. Just wanted to make sure the LCD panel I was linking would also work.

Ah, is this because the Arduino pulls more power? I thought I read it was pulling .4A, but I wasn't sure, hence the question.

Yeah, found the answer to that shortly after posting. :smack:

I have read a bunch over at community.brewpi.com but not posted there yet. As for the power supplies, I was not concerned with it taking up an extra receptacle b/c I wanted to add one anyway.

Thanks for your help!

 

The AVR can handle the LED in series with the optocoupler used on most relay modules plus a second LED in parallel. I've done this on my Bluetooth BrewPi minions as you can't see the relay module inside the box.

Star the connection from the UNO, send one copy to the relay module as usual and the other to the cathode of your added LED. Then connect the anode through a 200-300 ohm resistor to 3.3V or 5V (whichever you have handy) and you should be good to go...

Cheers!

 

Thanks day_trippr! I totally had to google the terms in your 1st paragraph, but thankfully I understood enough to parse out the 2nd paragraph and got it working!

 

I had a similar question about adding a fuse somewhere. I ended up using one of these to bring power into my enclosure.

For LEDs, I used these. They only need a hot and a neutral, not a resistor or anything else. These particular ones are about an inch across.

 

I found this on Amazon, it is a 8 relay version of the board you used. Can the Arduino support 8 relays? this would be a great way to have multiple chambers with one controller. http://www.amazon.ca/SainSmart-8-CH-8-Channel-Relay-Module/dp/B0057OC5WK/ref=pd_bxgy_422_img_y

 

BrewPi would have no idea what to do with the extra 6 channels...

Cheers!

 

On the other hand it's s way to let multiple controllers run one chamber

 

Ummm....

Nope.

Cheers! (I'm sure that was joke anyway )

 

Depending on the Arduino board, yes. It could handle 8 channels. BrewPi isn't set up to use them though. You'd have to write a custom program for whatever you were going to do.

 

Umm yep. What you think I've been doing with all those arduinos

 

Bookmarked. Starting my project this weekend.

 

OK so after my having the need to replace my Pi, I received it in the mail. I got Pints set back up and didn't need to reprogram my arduino, but I did anyways. For two days now I have been testing it with a carboy that has a thermowell and I have the water lock in there to recreate how I will ferment. After a day of the temp going from 3 degrees above to 3 degrees below my set beer temp, it has changed to going from my set beer temp and 3 degrees below my set temp. Do I need to get a heater for it? What does the community recommend? Thanks in advance

 

Running multiple independent heat belts inside your one chamber.

Not sure anyone else does that...

Cheers!

 

Is the thermowell sitting in beer, water - or air?

If there's any thermal mass at all I would expect the regulation to be much tighter than 3 degrees. As for the shift, the BrewPi control algorithm should be "learning" how to tighten up the regulation; perhaps it's getting there...

Cheers!

 

Its sitting in 5.5 gallons of water. I was hoping to brew tomorrow since I haven't been able to brew in about two months due to not being able to control ferm temps. I realize it may take more than 2 days to adjust

 

Well I'm hoping for a dual chamber in one over/under fridge. With 2 fully functional controllers for the bottom half and lagering chamber in the top that'll only need heat controls.

 

It shouldnt take that long, maybe an hour or two. Are you sure that your probe is actually all the way in your thermowell? I am willing to bet its not, ive had my probe get pulled up when i close the door so its not actually measuring liquid.

 

hi there!
The brewpi docs site is not working! They changed the domain?
Thank you
Other question, i can use a RTD Pt100 has a sensor?
Thank you

 

docs.brewpi.com works for me, try going there directly. The link from the homepage does seem to be broken at the moment.

Google tells me that it's possible to use an RTD but there are certain onewire probes that have to be used as well as changes to the software, at least in previous discussions about this. Probably not worth it if you can use DS18B20 probes. They're dirt cheap online.

 

thank you for your help!
Btw the docs are working now! I will buy a new prob

 

Yea i'd just use DS18B20 probes, you can buy a bundle of 5 prewired for like $15 on Amazon.

 

I got from ebay! I will wait for them to build up
I will use a computer as a server, i have some junk in here!
Thank you!

 

EDIT: Followed the "sudo adduser pi" command and got it to work.

Hi all,


Tried to install Brewpi. Towards the end of installation I got the message "Usermod: user 'pi' does not exist." Any explanation?


Here's my status that might give some hints.


Waiting for my arduino and relay to arrive in the mail. Decided to try to set an old PC. Saw people said that they used Ubuntu, so I downloaded and installed it. Connected to ethernet and ran the update script sggested as first step on manual page here (http://docs.brewpi.com/manual-brewpi-install/webserver-setup.html). Then I installed git and cloned the Brewpi toolbox from github (http://docs.brewpi.com/automated-brewpi-install/automated-brewpi-install.html). Started the install and got to where I had the error. I searched the first part(http://docs.brewpi.com/installing-your-pi/rpi-setup.html) and it mentions user 'pi' password 'raspberry'. Is the username I was supposed to use? Is it the username I should have used for Ubuntu?


Thanks for any help!

 

Sounds like you got it figured out. I posted a few pages back about how I set up Debian to use the automatic BrewPi installation script. Ubuntu should work mostly the same as it's built from Debian, I chose Debian because I wasn't using the box for anything else that I needed "user friendliness" for. I just wanted a low-resource solution.

The keys for me to using the install script were to manually add the brewpi directory at /var/www/html/brewpi (note that newer Linux distros may have migrated to include the /html/ subdirectory as the html document root) and to also change the installation script by replacing the calls for the "pi" user with my main username, so there isn't a new user floating around. "pi" is the default user profile on a Raspberry Pi, which is why BrewPi uses it by default - it assumes you haven't created a new user that you use instead.

And you also noticed that, for Debian or Ubuntu, you may have to add your primary user (pi or whomever) to the sudoers file. Sometimes "sudo" isn't even installed, which is a whole other rabbit trail of using "su" and then installing "sudo" and then adding your user to the sudoers file. Fun stuff.

 

Thanks for the info. I decided to skip over setting up WiFi and static IP, so I might just go back and reinstall everything in the correct order this time. I'll also probably just make the user pi.

Might try just installing Debian too since this is a super old computer. Minimizing a window takes ~4 seconds and I can watch the program shrink... Based on your description, Debian is the non-GUI version of Ubuntu? Think that would consume less power once I'm up and running with Brewpi?

 

Guess I spoke too soon. Downloaded git and got the files installed from GitHub. install.sh worked fine. It finished with "Happy Brewing". However, I can't get on the web interface now. It said go to IP address in the browser. Didn't work. I also tried https://brewpi like Fuzzewuzze said in the first page. That didn't work either.

Do I need a static IP for this? Should regular wifi work too? I tried to fix IP address outside of DHCP but screwed up. No internet access, so I reset the etc/network/interfaces. Just regular Wifi now (dynamic IP, I assume). I think I could have messed up that aspect. If I need a static IP, I can look more into that.

Might as well ask a few more related to that

Ran ifconfig (while on regular WiFi) and for the "wlan0" section, I got inet address 192.168.0.104 Bcast: 192.168.0.255 Mask 255.255.255.0

Opened my router in browser. The WAN on that page lists different IP Address, Subnet Mask, and Default Gateway than used by ifconfig.

I did click on DHCP tab and those IP start and end addresses are similar to ifconfig values. 192.168.0.100 to 192.168.0.199. The default gateway is 192.168.0.1.

So what do I set for values in interfaces section? What's the Bcast?

And last dumb one, it says wpa-ssid "YOUR_SSID". What is the actual format? No quotation marks actually needed? My SSID is two words with a space. Should I use the _ for a space? I figure linux might interpret as two commands.

Any help is appreciated!

 

Not necessarily, I just use Debian because it's the baseline for other more "refined" distros like Ubuntu. If you want to minimize resources, regardless of what distro you use, install a minimal DE like XFCE or, better yet, configure your box to not start an X windows server at all (it will just boot to a command line). Web server will still launch and no graphical interface to worry about. Then browse to the BrewPi address from another computer on your home network.

Debian isn't non-GUI, but any distro set to boot without starting a desktop environment (including Ubuntu) will have that much more resources to play with.

 

Try http://192.168.0.104 in your browser, assuming your system still has that Wifi IP address. If thats not working then the system isnt really up and functioning...

 

Did that and didn't work. Poor wording on my part. " It said go to IP address in the browser." Any ideas where I might have gone wrong? It doesn't need to be hooked up to Arduino to load in browser, does it?

 

If your on the raspi using the browser type localhost into the address bar and hit enter.

 

He's on a desktop, not an RPi. Which leads me to...

Did you let the install.sh put files in the default directory? BrewPi puts things in /var/www but newer Linux distros (or Apache builds) have switched to using /var/www/html for the document root. Try this:

ls /var/www

If there is an /html directory than that's the problem. You can copy all of the brewpi files into that /html directory or run the script again and put the files where you want.

What do you see when you go to http://localhost on the machine? If you see an Apache welcome page that confirms my theory. If you get something else then I'm probably wrong.

Raspbian still uses /var/www I believe.

 

Just went away for the weekend. That sounds like it could be the fix. I'll definitely try when I get back.

I tried to find the /var directory before. Didn't see it in the home directory though. Is that where it's located?

 

You can find the ip address of a *nix machine by running the command ifconfig from the command line.

 

Notice he says /var/www

Not /home/var/www

/var is in the highest level directory

 

I tried helping someone set up BPi on lappy recently and the newer distro extra /var/www/html/ instead of /var/www/ threw a wrench in the works until I figured out that's what was happening.

 

Debian Jesse recently went the way of Ubuntu when it comes to the way apache sets up its directories.

 

YESSS, I finally solved this (on my own)! Turns out that when I installed and told it I wanted to run web directory in /var/www/brewpi/, that last "/" didn't wind up in the config.cfg file, even though it installed everything in the right place. All I had to do was add that! Hope this helps anyone else with a similar issue.