Brewometer kickstarter thoughts - digital bluetooth hydrometer

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The only drawback to using this is that if you don't have any data for the day you get a #DIV/0! error in the cell. If I only knew how to fix that....

In Excel, you can use IFERROR to tell it what to do when there is an error

=IFERROR(AVERAGEIF(C2:C10029,">="&(TODAY()),D2:D10029),"No Data")
 
Last edited:
enkamania said:
The only drawback to using this is that if you don't have any data for the day you get a #DIV/0! error in the cell. If I only knew how to fix that....

In Excel, you can use IFERROR to tell it what to do when there is an error

=IFERROR(AVERAGEIF(C2:C10029,">="&(TODAY()),D2:D10029),"No Data")
Click to expand...

NICE! That fixed that one. Thanks!
 
Here's my google sheet for the Brewometer. I still haven't received my actual device yet, however I've been preparing for its arrival by creating my Brewometer cloud sheet. Here's my shared gauge/chart sheet that only shows the gauges and chart.

I added a few features like:

* Variable heartbeat setting - You can set how often the sheet updates the "Brewometer Status" field on the published guages/charts sheets. This check compares the Last Update (Reports!B13) to the Heartbeat Calculation field (Settings!A2). The Heartbeat Calculation field takes the current time "NOW()" and subtracts the desired heartbeat interval, which for me is stored in Settings!B2. I added some conditional formating to the Brewometer Status field that turns green or red based upon if the Brewometer is reporting data or not.

* Published Gauges sheet - Allows me to pull it up on my Android phone and just see a dashboard of pertinent information. This also includes Average Temperature gauge and an Average SG gauge. These gauges were created of the Reports! sheet by pulling data in a cell that contained the following formula: = IFERROR(AVERAGEIF(C2:C10029, ">=" & (TODAY()),D2: D10029),"No Data")

Work in progress...
 
So I kegged my "Otterly Mosaic" SMASH, retrieved the Tilt, cleaned it off, put in a new battery, and dropped it into a jug of water.

I also purchased a Light Blue Bean, the better to see how these things work.

I'm also still toying with ways to access the Tilt and the bean.

As I mentioned, my iPhone 3GS isn't usable, nor is my Nexus 10.

What I do have are a bunch of SOC boards; raspberry pi, odroidc2, pine64A, etc, Surely one of those can be used...

Not so much so far. :(

The closest I've gotten is with the Pine64A running RemixOS. I managed to connect the to the Tilt for about 30 seconds before the connection was dropped, never to return.

Now that the battery has been replaced, I'm going to monitor it with my linux program, and see how long the battery lasts.

More to follow.
 
jimmayhugh said:
So I kegged my "Otterly Mosaic" SMASH, retrieved the Tilt, cleaned it off, put in a new battery, and dropped it into a jug of water.

I also purchased a Light Blue Bean, the better to see how these things work.

I'm also still toying with ways to access the Tilt and the bean.

As I mentioned, my iPhone 3GS isn't usable, nor is my Nexus 10.

What I do have are a bunch of SOC boards; raspberry pi, odroidc2, pine64A, etc, Surely one of those can be used...

Not so much so far. :(

The closest I've gotten is with the Pine64A running RemixOS. I managed to connect the to the Tilt for about 30 seconds before the connection was dropped, never to return.

Now that the battery has been replaced, I'm going to monitor it with my linux program, and see how long the battery lasts.

More to follow.
Click to expand...

Did you get BT low energy stuff figured out? How often are you querying the Tilt?
 
I know my program is far from complete but it works by listening for the broadcast transmissions alone and runs fine on a RaspberryPi 2 or below with the appropriate Bluetooth 4 dongle.
They seem to come in bursts and so the code is collapsing them out and only sending a message after a timeout of all data collected up to that point.
It should work OTB (with a few missing Python packages perhaps) on a RaspberryPi3.

My code sends the data to a MQTT server at this time and it's up to a 'listener' to listen for the data and do something with it.

The link again:
https://github.com/tmclane/brewmonitor

Maybe it can help someone get ahead on their project.
 
How do I clear the logging data so my chart only reflects the data of the beer I just started fermenting with the Tilt? I'm unable to find much info on working with the Google spreadsheet.
 
phishie said:
How do I clear the logging data so my chart only reflects the data of the beer I just started fermenting with the Tilt? I'm unable to find much info on working with the Google spreadsheet.
Click to expand...

Perhaps this thread is now hi-jacked by "Tilt", whatever it is, but in brewometer google sheets you just select "Brewometer Color OR Beer:" selection in B-2 field of the spreadsheet. Super easy.
 
55x11 said:
Perhaps this thread is now hi-jacked by "Tilt", whatever it is, but in brewometer google sheets you just select "Brewometer Color OR Beer:" selection in B-2 field of the spreadsheet. Super easy.
Click to expand...

Thank you. Re: tilt, I'm fairly certain we're talking about the same product and it was renamed from brewometer to tilt: http://tilthydrometer.com/

Forgive me if I'm missing the joke.
 
No joke. Joke's on me apparently. I missed renaming and thought this is a new competitor brand.
 
thekraken said:
How often are you querying the Tilt?
Click to expand...
My software interrogates the Tilt once per minute, using cron. Here's the latest with a new battery:
20160813.png


I keep a bunch of CR123A batteries around for other projects, and this one had a shelf-life date of 2018, so I expected it to be around 85%-90% of capacity, based on my research and experience. I was surprised that the battery ran out so quickly. I'm going to re-do the test with a fresher battery.
 
jimmayhugh said:
My software interrogates the Tilt once per minute, using cron. Here's the latest with a new battery:
20160813.png


I keep a bunch of CR123A batteries around for other projects, and this one had a shelf-life date of 2018, so I expected it to be around 85%-90% of capacity, based on my research and experience. I was surprised that the battery ran out so quickly. I'm going to re-do the test with a fresher battery.
Click to expand...

Hmm. My battery lasted about 4 months, from April to August, with constant use. Maybe it's your "every minute" cron routine interrogation that somehow drains battery?
 
55x11 said:
Hmm. My battery lasted about 4 months, from April to August, with constant use. Maybe it's your "every minute" cron routine interrogation that somehow drains battery?
Click to expand...

The Tilt issues an iBeacon advertisement about every 10 seconds, according to the Tilt FAQ:
Q. How often does the Tilt/Brewometer take measurement readings?

A. The Tilt/Brewometer will send updated measurement readings for temperature and specific gravity to your iOS or Android device every 10 seconds.
Click to expand...

I was using the "scratch" readings that required a connection to the Tilt, read the parameters, and process the parameters, which I did with a cron setup once a minute. According to the Tilt developers, this takes more power (from an e-mail conversation with them):
We see you've connected using the scratches. While connected, in addition to the LED blinking, the radio is used more frequently. We're working on another solution for Raspberry Pi using the advertisement packets. iBeacon uses less battery life.
Click to expand...

I finally found some code at the SwitchDoc Labs github that allow the RPI to act as an iBeacon scanner. Of course, it's in Python :smack:

Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Python other than I DON'T WANT TO LEARN ANOTHER LANGUAGE!!! Call me lazy, stubborn, old, whatever...

At any rate, I managed to modify it enough in order to A) suit my needs and B) incorporate it into my PHP script. :ban:

So I've got the code running, I'm collecting data samples once a minute, and we'll see where it goes.
 
BobOki said:
It's not the os version that matters, it's the version of bt which I think has to be bt4.
Click to expand...

To add on to this, not all Bluetooth 4.0 devices work as well as others. I bought a cheap Android tablet off of Amazon that said it was BT 4. Not only could I not pair it with the Tilt, it wouldn't pair with my BT speaker of keyboard either! I ended up buying my son's unused iPad Mini and the Tilt works flawlessly.
 
We have had plenty of guys grab a Amazon Kindle and it work great with the Tilt, it kind of sounds like your device is actually defective. I would send that back to Amazon, they are great about replacements.
 
BobOki said:
We have had plenty of guys grab a Amazon Kindle and it work great with the Tilt, it kind of sounds like your device is actually defective. I would send that back to Amazon, they are great about replacements.
Click to expand...

I returned it after 2 days of troubleshooting. It was a NeuTab 7'' Quad Core Android 5.1 Lollipop Tablet. I ended up paying my son about $20 more for his iPad Mini and it's worked out better for me since I already have an iPad and iPhone.
 
I'm now using the advertisements to track the Tilt using a Raspberry Pi 2, and battery life seems much improved.

I've mixed up about 3 quarts of 1.051 OG water and DME, shook the crap out of it, and added some old yeast I had lying about. Dropped in the Tilt, and have it sitting in my office/lab being monitored.

We'll see how it goes.:mug:
 
jimmayhugh said:
I'm now using the advertisements to track the Tilt using a Raspberry Pi 2, and battery life seems much improved.

I've mixed up about 3 quarts of 1.051 OG water and DME, shook the crap out of it, and added some old yeast I had lying about. Dropped in the Tilt, and have it sitting in my office/lab being monitored.

We'll see how it goes.:mug:
Click to expand...

Care to share your code? I just got a tilt in the mail and could do some testing along with you.
 
I sent a note to Tilt but thought I'd post here as well to see if anyone experienced something similar.

I am using the Tilt-provided Google Cloud sheet and a few weeks ago the Tilt suddenly stopped posting to the cloud. I went back through the Set-up, Publish to the Web, etc steps and re-coped the URL to the Tilt iPhone App.

Now I only get "undefined".

My Tilt is connected to a dedicated iPhone and it getting information from the Tilt so the data should be "definded".

Any thoughts?
 
thekraken said:
Care to share your code? I just got a tilt in the mail and could do some testing along with you.
Click to expand...

I'm running one more test, this time with 1.057 water and dextrose with a wine yeast.

If you have a RPI3 or RPI2 with a BLE dongle, load Raspbian, Apache, MySQL, Python and PHP. I can send you a zip file with the SQL to create the database, and the PHP/Python scripts.
 
jimmayhugh said:
I'm running one more test, this time with 1.057 water and dextrose with a wine yeast.

If you have a RPI3 or RPI2 with a BLE dongle, load Raspbian, Apache, MySQL, Python and PHP. I can send you a zip file with the SQL to create the database, and the PHP/Python scripts.
Click to expand...

PM sent. :mug:
 
Had another little hiccup, the replacement battery went tango uniform after about 4 days, so I fished the Tilt out of the solution, cleaned it and replaced it with a new battery that I purchased for just such a circumstance. We'll see how long this battery lasts...

Here's the graph, the hiccup is obvious:
20160826Tilt.png
 
I really enjoy my "Tilt", but if anybody (including developers) dispute the fact that temperature affects the device, they should look at the graph at the bottom of my page:
https://sites.google.com/site/brasseriedavidpepin/

This is an Oktoberfest. Notice that I was able to ferment at 50, and raise to a D-rest when attenuation was over 50% (following Brulosophy's lager method, more or less). Notice how the gravity was stable for almost a week, hovering around 1.010, and notice how it went down exactly when i started the lagering phase.

(edited: added a screenshot)

Capture d’e?cran 2016-08-30 a? 05.58.26.png
 
Well, the "new" battery lasted a bit longer:

20160831.png


At about 175 hours, I modified the code to allow the display of readings above 0.000, but less than 1.000.

Also I found out that the battery level is not part of the iBeacon advertisement:

******** My e-mail to the developers ********
Hi Marcus,

I finally have my RPI setup successfully reading the iBeacon advertisement from the Tilt. I get the SG and temperature, but not the battery. Is this information obtained as part of a scan request?

Best regards,
Jim Mayhugh

******** Their reply ********

Jim,
We do not include battery level in the iBeacon advertisement. Sorry.
Cheers,
Marcus
Click to expand...

I'm going to bite the bullet, get a cheap Android device, a bluetooth sniffer, and do some more investigation. Any recommendations for a readily available, cheap android device that works?

Also, anyone that is using a copy of my code for testing: If you are using a Tilt other than a Black, would you mind e-mailing a copy of the MAC address (or UUID) and color of your device when it's reading the iBeacon adverts? I'd like to make sure my code can handle multiple Tilts, without having to buy additional devices.
 
My data logging spreadsheet started logging "undefined" in the date/time field....anyone have an idea why or how i might troubleshoot it? Seems to be doing it for both my brewometer units...
 
On the first sheet of the spreadsheet there is a drop down selection on the left for selecting the color of your device. Try looking there.
 
Can you reduce battery usage of the Tilt by turning off logging from the phone or does that not affect the Tilt battery usage? (Have it in a beer right now that is cold crashing/aging and I don't want to open it up to pull out the tilt but don't need it's data currently.)
 
aulenus said:
Very interesting, I'll keep my eye on this one.
Click to expand...

I've had my brewometer for about a month now. Recently used it in one of my brews and although I had some issues with the tablet the brewometer app was loaded on, the brewometer itself has been amazing.

Even if the SG data isn't super accurate, it is nice to see the gradual decline in SG over the fermentation period. That alone is worth its weight in gold.

With my setup, I am fermenting 10 gallons in a modified 15.5 sanke keg. The keg sits in a typical chest freezer. I found if I place the tablet running the brewometer app on top of the chest freezer, I cannot receive the Bluetooth signal. If I place the tablet in the chest freezer, on top of the keg, then it works like a champ! I just threw a rechargeable dehumidifier in a zip lock bag with the tablet to prevent moisture from getting to the tablet.

brewometer.jpg
 
phishie said:
Can you reduce battery usage of the Tilt by turning off logging from the phone or does that not affect the Tilt battery usage? (Have it in a beer right now that is cold crashing/aging and I don't want to open it up to pull out the tilt but don't need it's data currently.)
Click to expand...

The iPhone, iPad, Android device, whatever is just reading the iBeacon broadcasts that occur about every 6-10 seconds. Turning off the logging device has no effect on the Tilt's battery.
 
Well, my Tilt has once again crapped out after about a week of use...:confused:

I've currently got it in an IPA that I helped a new brewer create. I'll have to wait until I transfer it to the secondary to see what's going on.
 
jimmayhugh said:
Well, my Tilt has once again crapped out after about a week of use...:confused:

I've currently got it in an IPA that I helped a new brewer create. I'll have to wait until I transfer it to the secondary to see what's going on.
Click to expand...

Something must be wrong with your unit causing excessive battery current draw. Mine in on its original battery since about 6/23/16 and is still going. I have never removed the battery, so assume it's been running constantly.

Brew on :mug:
 

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