Native ESP8266 BrewPi Firmware - WiFi BrewPi, no Arduino needed!

Happend in my system to, so this is just to confirm the above.

 

I've been tracking this thread for updates, any news on the great gravity showdown?

 

I just completed my Arduino-based build and hung the box on the wall. It's currently running with 12 gallons of water in the chest freezer and everything seems to be working fine, so thanks!

My wish list of features:

1) Email and/or SMS notifications. My last controller froze 12 gallons of beer, so it would be nice to have notifications if the temperature varies more than X degrees. I guess notifications for each step of a profile would be helpful, too.

2) Notification if my Pi loses network connectivity or hangs/crashes. I guess that would have to be handled on my end.

I would also like to be able to view (but not necessarily control) my beer status without having to worry about exposing the Pi to the Internet. I can work around this by using the temperature and gravity readings from the Tilt via brewstat.us, I suppose.

Looking forward to using my new controller with my next brew!

 

Yep! Things at work have been pretty crazy for the last few weeks and my first 'free' day since Christmas was this past Saturday. That said, we're now through year end & holiday season, so I should be able to go back to things that don't involve Excel shortly. First up is the great gravity showdown.

I'm looking to kick it off (hopefully!) later tonight for the non-Tilt/non-iSpindel hydrometers. Tilt & iSpindel will be after I get iSpindel support into Fermentrack. (It will double as a test for the Fermentrack sensor support)

(almost) All of these things are currently planned - but are probably 3-6 months out.

 

I'll create a separate thread for it here shortly, but the great gravity showdown is now underway. Shown below are the contenders:



Contenders:

In the first (leftmost) column, from top to bottom you have:

• Brix-scale ATC Refractometer
• A cheap hydrometer
• Herculometer 1.000 to 1.070 Precision Scale Hydrometer
• Triple-scale Hydrometer

In the second (middle) column, you have:

• STM Instruments eDrometer Digital Hydrometer
• Milwaukee MA871 Digital Hydrometer

And in the last (rightmost) column you have:

• Anton Paar DMA35v4 Digital Hydrometer

For temperature readings, I'm going to be using a Thermoworks BlueTherm Duo (now called the ThermaQ) with a waterproof wire probe.

Methods:

During the course of this experiment, I look to test multiple methods for measuring specific gravity with the goal to compare accuracy and ease of use, as well as compare the pros and cons of each piece of equipment. In order to do this I will create a solution of sugar & water, measure the specific gravity of that solution, and then ferment that solution with standard dried beer yeast. I will then look to measure the gravity of that solution again post fermentation and compare the results.

To create the solution I took 1 gallon of warm water & mixed it with 1 lb of standard table sugar. Once this was complete, I took initial measurements of the warm solution with the digital hydrometers/refractometer and then chilled the mixture to a reasonable pitching temperature and measured the specific gravity again with both the digital and manual hydrometers/refractometers. Once this was done I then pitched Safbrew S-33 brewing yeast and set the mixture aside to ferment.


I've got photos of everything saved out - I'll go through & look to get them sorted/posted here shortly. For now, the solution is sitting on a table in my office, resting while the yeast wake up & get to work!

 

Hi Thorrak, great work but I was just wondering if any one tried using brewpi with remote control plugs like mybrewbot.com which uses an app to control it by Blynk.cc. They use the esp8266 with a cheep 433mhz transmitters it would be great if someone could integrate them with brewpi.

 

If you’re up to the task, you could probably create this with @ame ‘s Fuscus project.

 

I wish I could but I’m not that clever, plus isn’t that for rpi the esp8266 is more stable than the rpi + there cheap as chips.

 

Hi Chaps;

I am a proper newb when it comes to this... I have a pretty basic FreeNAS setup, would it be possible to run the use the NAS in place of the Pi in for this? And if so where would I even start to search for information?

 

This version uses both RPI as a webserver and the ESP device to watch the temp and control the chamber temperatures.

 

Thorrak - thanks again for working on this project. I continue to really like Fermentrack. Due to some extenuating circumstances in my brewery, I had to refresh my Raspberry Pi and reinstall Fermentrack. It is soooo much less painful than the old manual way of installing multiple chambers in a BrewPi format. Anyway, two comments on extremely minor issues.

I received a Tilt for Christmas and I finally got that hooked up. It was a breeze. The only thing to note on the install is that there is still the "&deg" typo on the dashboard.

Secondly, on the dashboard for one of my chambers, I don't have a room temperature temp probe. The graph has the temperature at 0 degrees when there is not probe. It would be nice if the probe wasn't displayed at all so that the graph didn't have 0 degrees as the lower point. You can manually click on the legend, turning off the probe data, and that changes the graph to a finer grain, but it would be convenient if it weren't displayed at all.

Thanks again for your efforts!

 

@Thorrak what software/tools do you use to modify/build the firmware bin file for the ESP? I was taking a look at the source code on git and wondered where to start if I wanted to make my own modification.

I'm eager to try an LCD reset loop.

 

In theory, absolutely. Because there's no serial requirement for ESP-based controllers (yay WiFi) you can theoretically run BrewPi-www or Fermentrack on almost any device with relatively modern Python support. I develop Fermentrack on my Mac (& test/debug from within MacOS) and have run test rigs within Ubuntu-based VMs. The trick, as you noted, is searching for info.

FreeNAS is BSD-based which means that a lot of the assumptions made about the environment you're running Fermentrack within are not valid. You'd probably have to install everything manually, including packages/prerequisites. Could it be done? Absolutely! Unless you enjoy tinkering, however, it's probably not worth the $10 you'd save over buying a RasPi Zero and going that route.

Hey there! Thanks for the note - glad you found the installation process to be easy & straightforward to run!

You are correct - that bug is still there. Unfortunately, I started a new job back in October, and as a result of things happening there haven't been able to dedicate much time to anything other than work. It's funny - you can basically see the busy period during the last few weeks at my old job & when things at the new job started to become hectic by looking at my GitHub contribution graph:



Thankfully, things are finally starting to calm down a bit now that we're past the holiday/year end period, and I'm hoping to have some time soon to work on "fun" projects that don't involve Excel. First up is fixing the &deg bug, after that I'll see if I can add a flag of some sort to toggle the room sensor graph.

Nice! I use CLion + Platformio and absolutely love it. That said - I'm a sucker for any JetBrains IDE, so if you're a fan of another environment it might make sense to try using that + Platformio instead.

I started to write some documentation on developing with my solution, but haven't had time to really flesh it out/attempt to set up a new environment from scratch. It will happen at some point, I'm sure, but that may be a ways out. In the mean time, if you go down this route and have any questions/run into any issues, please don't hesitate to reach out. I'm happy to do what I can to help!

 

Great! Thanks for the pointers. I've only used Arduino IDE up until now so I'll take a look at those. I've got a VBA background so I'm up for a challenge. I'm hoping I can pick it up!

 

Hey guys,
I would like to ask for help, since I am no expert in linux. I took me 2 days to run Fermetrack on Rpi3 + ESP8266. I was having the same error that Cougar281 was mentioning (raspbian stretch). I could make it work on the latest jessie release.
But my question is... I set the whole thing up on a home Wifi, where the DHCP on the router assigned the RPi the IP address x.x.x.68. I was able to ping RPi, ssh it, and access the web interface and set/flash the ESP8266 on the home Wifi. Now I want to take it over to a new router (with no internet access) and make the RPi have the IP x.x.x.100. I have bound the RPi MAC address with x.x.x.100 on the router, changed the wpa_supplicant file (ssid and pswd) for the new router (wifi), but now I am not able to ssh the RPI, neither access the WEB interface. Pinging the RPi on x.x.x.100 works, but that's all. Then I tried to bind the previous x.x.x.68 with the MAC address of the RPi on the router and then everything works again, but I would like to have the x.x.x.100 IP on the RPi. So I assume there must be some forgotten settings in the RPi configuration, that prevents from ssh it / access the web running on it.
Any thoughts?
thanks

 

@Thorrak I think I've got my environment set up correctly. As a test I just imported the legacy-platformio from git and built the bin without changing any code. The resulting bin was different in size to the one on git. This is the output from the platformio terminal http://txt.do/dmnxy does it look OK to you?

 

Hello. I am experiencing the same issue. Was a resolution ever identified?
Thank you!

 

I was having the same problem with the raspbian stretch release. If you run/install raspbian jessie release, then everything should work fine. The latest raspbian jessie release can be found here: http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_lite/images/raspbian_lite-2017-07-05/

 

My BrewPi install crapped out, so I decided to make the switch to this. Looks very slick and setup was fairly easy.

I do have a question though. Is there an easy way to set a URL base? I have nginx running on a different server that I use for all my apps. I had brewpi set up as

location /brewpi {
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/proxy.conf;
proxy_pass http://192.168.0.103/brewpi;
}

changing to

location /brewpi {
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/proxy.conf;
proxy_pass http://192.168.0.103;
}

with different slashes and ports just causes issues with Django saying

Page not found (404)
Using the URLconf defined in fermentrack_django.urls, Django tried these URL patterns, in this order:

...

I'm not too familiar with Django so I'm not really sure what I should look into. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks!

 

Hey just installed fermentrack, I already had Brewpi. This was super easy. Thanks I love this interface. I guess I need to buy a tilt now.

 

Thank you to all for your work on this project. I installed Fermentrack on a Pi3 with Raspian Stretch. Seemed to work, but would NOT serve web pages - received "504 Gateway Timeout" error and referenced nginx. Tried several times, same result. Reloaded with Jesse and worked as expected. BUT...

I then successfully flashed my ESP8266-12 and joined it to Fermentrack via wifi. I'm having the same problem as Bum Fudge post #1220. Temp sensors show up as available devices, but when I assign function it reports "Device definition saved for device 4", but doesn't actually set the association. I have re-flashed several times and all seems to work other than I can't assign the temp sensors...

Was this ever resolved? If so, what was the fix? Thanks in advance.

 

First thing I would check is the pinouts. They differ from the 1st post in this thread. Check fermentrack.com

 

Thanks. Yes - pins are correct. Since there's not been any issues identified with the current software, it may be a hardware problem with the ESP8266. This ones's been used for a lot of other projects, but may have some memory problems. I'll find another and give that a try.

 

Unfortunately, I never managed to figure out what specifically was happening. Bum Fudge was kind enough to exchange me his defective ESP for a working one, but I haven't yet been able to coax it into working. I would try a different controller if you can - hopefully that solves the problem!

 

Interestingly enough, the exact same issue pops up under Ubuntu as well (which makes me happy, as it's far easier to fix when I can recreate the issue on my end!)

I'll see what I can come up with. I don't like it when things don't work on the latest version of Raspbian!

 

I made a tweak to the default nginx ipv6 configuration issue, so I'm hoping this fixes things. Previously, nginx was set up so that if an ipv6 configuration line was included, while the ipv6 server would be available, it wouldn't be the only one used by default. They've since switched the default configuration such that if an ipv6 configuration line is available it is always used. I've now tweaked the configuration file to explicitly specify the old behavior.

If this doesn't work for anyone, please let me know!

I THINK that this (the issue where python packages aren't installed properly in some cases) has now been resolved in the installation script. Thanks again to all the help from @alexlark and others.

Again - if this still is failing for anyone, please let me know and I'll take another look.

To be honest, I don't know. Originally I thought the answer was "no", but after researching it a bit it might be possible using a combination of the rewrite and proxy_pass directives within the nginx configuration file. I don't think I'll have a chance to look into this in the near future, but I'll try to take a look at some point as this would be good to know (and helpful for installing multiple instances of Fermentrack, or something like Raspberry Pints!).

 

I'm having a problem on a new build. My temperature probes are dropping off intermittently, which sends the controller into a tizzy. It will cool for a few minutes and then stop. The LCD indicates that it is then waiting for like 18 hours or more. I have reset the eeprom multiple times. Sometime after a reset, the probes show up and sometimes they don't. Any ideas?

edit: Here's an excerpt from the error log:



Feb 03 2018 23:35:40 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:35:41 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:35:41 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:35:42 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:35:42 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:35:44 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:35:46 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:35:47 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 18: Negative peak detected: 44.7, estimated: 118.4. Previous cool estimator: 7.500, New cool estimator: 11.250.
Feb 03 2018 23:35:49 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:35:51 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:35:51 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:35:52 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:35:52 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:35:53 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:35:53 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:35:54 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:35:58 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:35:59 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:35:59 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:36:00 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:36:01 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:02 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:03 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:04 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:05 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:36:05 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:36:06 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:07 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:07 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:07 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:07 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:09 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:36:10 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:36:11 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:36:12 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:36:13 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:13 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:36:14 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:36:14 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:17 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:36:17 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:36:19 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:20 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:23 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:36:23 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:36:25 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:25 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:26 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:26 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:29 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:30 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:36:30 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:36:30 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:36:30 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:33 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:34 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:36:34 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF30DF8014025E
Feb 03 2018 23:36:34 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FFB1E58014020B
Feb 03 2018 23:36:37 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:36:37 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:36:39 Controller debug message: WARNING 2: Temperature sensor disconnected pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243
Feb 03 2018 23:36:39 Controller debug message: INFO MESSAGE 0: Temp sensor connected on pin 0, address 28FF802C81140243

 

That's a first for me, unfortunately... How are you powering the sensors? What resistor are you using in line with them?

 

I'm using your pcb, but instead of using the RJ11 jack, I'm going straight to the pins on the ESP. I'm using the 3.3, the GND and D6. I have a 4.7k resistor on the board.

 

Well. Hmm. The only other options I can think of would be to try the sensors individually (if that's possible in your setup) in case one of them was somehow causing issues on the data line for the others. Alternatively, if you have one available it might make sense to try a different ESP8266.

I'm guessing that the EEPROM clearing isn't really doing much from what you're describing - all that is stored in the EEPROM is the fact of the existence (and mapping) of the temperature sensors. Once they're set up, they should remain set up and report back temperatures to the ESP without issue.

 

I'm in the midst of building three controllers. That was the first one. I'll finish the second one and see what happens and report back. Thanks for the help.

 

Nice! Let me know how it goes. I've got two running at the moment, and the only issue I've encountered is the issue with WiFi not always reconnecting if the network disappears. It's on the list - I just need to get some time to fix it.

 

I have all three of the ESP8266's programmed. The dashboard looks cool with the three ESP's and my old arduino build. They held steady for a day, which gave me the false hope of building the boxes and having it work perfectly...

 

The Great Gravity Showdown (non-automated edition) is currently posted here. I've got the first two posts written with the setup (posted above in this thread) and first round of results. I'll post later tonight/tomorrow with the post-fermentation results & final thoughts.

 

I just pushed a few tiny bugfixes live for Fermentrack. Nothing too major - these fix the ° display bug and display bugs where gravity sensors would have a ton of digits after the decimal.

 

Thanks for the fixes. I just upgraded and everything went smoothly. I'm currently fermenting my first beer with Fermentrack and my Arduino-based temperature controller. It just reached pitching temp and now I'll let it ramp up to 68. Everything seems to be working fine.

 

Thorrak
Can you share what version of Python you are using? I cloned the repo and tried compiling with version 3.6 and saw that it must bee based on an earlier version.
Thanks

 

It's all 2.7. I eventually need to upgrade to 3.x, but haven't seen a compelling reason to just yet.

 

@Thorrak Can you take a look at this when you get 5 mins

Thanks very much.

Alex