A Home brewer's New Best Friend - Wireless Multi-Sensor

[TheBusiness]

I started jumping up and down today when I stumbled across this new product. It's a wireless multi-sensor that measures light, humidity, temperature, motion, and sound. The kicker is, it can be programmed to work with IFTTT. If you are not familiar with "if this, than that" automation technology I have included the link at the bottom.

What does this all mean for us home brewers?
the technology to monitor and control every aspect of our brewing, fermenting, and conditioning has existed for years now. The problem was, you needed to have some basic dev, programming, or maker skills to get a respectable solution working for you. This little circular sensor can be programmed (literally anyone can do it through the Graphic User Interface) to do anything you want for brewing.

Some of the obvious applications are:
- email/text me when my beer has finished fermenting
- control my refrigerator (fermentation) temperatures
- text me daily updates about my beer cellar's temp, humidity, etc
- email/text if a bottle bomb goes off in my cellar!

Please take a look at the links and help me brainstorm how this simple and cost effective tech can help us all out in this awesome community. :rockin:

The Sensor (Spotter): https://grandst.com/p/spotter
IFTTT: https://ifttt.com/wtf

 

[jpalarchio]

Sorry to be a nah-sayer but I don't see a lot of applications for this product in homebrewing. What kind of output options does it have to take action with.


Some things I'd like to see someone develop and make available on a homebrewer's budget:

* Digital specific gravity sensor. I was excited about the BrewBug when it was getting press. Seems like I haven't heard much since their Kickstarter campaign. Pretty sure I saw something from them saying they were going to step back and make a top notch temp control because that's what people wanted. No it's not, I have a temp controller, I wanted the specific gravity sensor.

* Digital volume sensor. I'm not aware of a volume sensor that can be used under the heat, steam and humidity of brewing conditions that isn't insanely expensive. I'd like to see one that doesn't require doing something like the "bubbler method"

 

[day_trippr]

If this widget provided for an external temperature probe it'd actually be useful to me as a networked temperature monitor. I doubt it would be happy trying to communicate over WiFi from the bottom of my keezer or either of my brew fridges...

Cheers!

 

[TheBusiness]

Well with the rate of innovation that we are seeing these days, I wouldn't be surprised to see a digital volume sensor or gravity sensor sometime soon.

This spotter sensor is just another tool I wanted to bring to the table. Maybe it'll help some people, maybe not others. Either way I like the innovation.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Home Brew mobile app

 

[insanim8er]

Sweet... now I can get alerted when someone is getting too close to my kegerator. Does it sound an alarm warning them to back away?

If someone is too close, then sound the alarm.
If they don't back away, then fire at will.