Raspberry Pi and longevity

Have any of you guys had issues with it running properly after a certain period of time? Mine gets a little funky from time to time.

 

I've had a Brewpi running fine for over a year without a hickup - even surprised me a bit...

The Pi lost its brains about a year and a half ago, reloaded fine and has been slogging along ever since - knock on wood...

 

Thats what mine did, the longevity of it is just not there. Im building my neighbor a BIAB brewery (hes not very mechanical) and im worried about him haing to reload anything. Sounds like im going with a PID

 

Pi to control a BIAB? Yea, use a PID if you want super reliability. I've NEVER had a problem with my PID's

Unfortunately the PID's dont do as good of a job when controlling ferm chambers - and in my opinion, the BrewPi is hard to beat. (STC1000+ comes mighty close if you dont care about logging)

But for controlling mash temps... PID is the way to go.

 

Wait, so you are concerned about something going wonky after a year and a half? You really think that 20 dollar STC1000 will do that? Power fluctuations, cosmic events, teenagers pulling the plug to plug in their iPad?

Seriously, if they just need a regular steady temperature, get a regular mechanical thermostat is probably what they need.

If you are talking about a BIAB rig, why would you be trying to run it for a year and a a half? Power it down when not brewing.

A BrewPi is not a BIAB rig.

Chef Jay

 

Took me a minute to realize we are on two different pages. I was talking about strangebrew style.

 

I had one rebooting often and it turned out to be an issue with overheating. I have a 24v power supply in there that was always-on and generating just enough heat to matter. I didn't have a probe in there, but it only felt "slightly warm" to me. I rewired it and added a relay switch to only power on the transformer when needed and that solved my issues. Some folks have had issues with power draw from some USB wifi dongles causing reboots. In that case a powered USB hub helps.

 

I haven't had any weird issues with the Pi, although I don't currently use one for brewing. I do have one controlling my garage door though and the up-time is just under a year. I'm running arch linux on it though, so maybe it's a raspbian issue you're running into?