Brewometer kickstarter thoughts - digital bluetooth hydrometer

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I am happy to report that the device seems to be functioning properly: it is currently covered in thick krausen (pitched yeast on Tuesday evening), and the gravity has been steadily declining since about 12-16 hours after pitching time - with the expected fluctuations up and down, but the trend is clear : From an initial 1.059 to now around 1.038.

I find it pretty neat to see monitor the gravity and the temperature: the steady temperature (65-66) gives me confidence in my newly put together fermentation fridge. Looking forward to the rest of the fermentation (ramping temp towards the end, seeing it stabilize, and then cold crash).

I will still take a hydrometer reading (for accuracy) at bottling time, but I am pretty happy with being able to better understand where my beer is at!
 
Interesting in how often the app polls the unit. According to their FAQ:

"The Brewometer will send updated measurement readings for temperature and specific gravity to your iOS or Android device every 10 seconds."
 
mhermetz said:
My club is currently trying to see if they would do a bulk buy. Hell even if we save on shipping that would be sweet.
Click to expand...

Please let us know what they say about doing a group/bulk buy. This would be great even for the shipping part if that could be reduced for several units.
 
For those interested, this is what the graph produced by Google Sheets looks like (that is about 45 hours after pitching yeast). There is a big "gap" in data (when my phone rebooted right before I left for work), but it gives a good idea:
http://imgur.com/wpHYb7F
 
For those who have received their, how long did it take to deliver or when did you get a notification to when it might ship?

I will publish the spreadsheet to google sites to share the real-time reporting on my next beer!

By the way, anyone pushing data to the clould, please publish your google sheet to the web so we can view in on the fun!

thanks!
 
I made my sheet viewable to anyone with the link, so if you're curious, feel free to take a look here.

My first unit was shipped the same day I ordered it, and we're both in California, so I had it in 2 days.

My second unit was ordered on the 16th, but has not yet shipped. The developer told me they were bundling that one with my replacement, so maybe that's why it's taking longer.

Also the first one I ordered was orange while the second one was green, so maybe they had orange ones in stock but not green ones. Dunno.

I also pointed the developer to this thread to see more feedback, etc., and he told me that he loved that folks here and already hacked it and was very supportive of that. He said that's one of the reasons they went with open source stuff, so people could hack it into whatever they wanted.

He also mentioned they are already talking about adding a battery monitor to an upcoming version of the app.

FWIW - After those couple initial temp/gravity anomalies this unit has been functioning fine, but they still insisted on replacing it. Seem like solid guys to me.
 
Just made my purchase, I plan to brew once it gets here and using a spare tablet for continuous logging to Google. I hate taking samples so this will be a great addition to my equipment. Thanks everyone for posting your experience, the recent chart fully sold me.
 
Good to see the sheets graphing working, but I don't understand why the app can't do the graphing right in it. It's not a lot of data relative to available memory. Even if it plots occasional data, general graphs could be assembled.
 
Set mine up yesterday in a glass of water in the garage, set it to publish to the web.

Looks solid, fluctuates between .998 and 1.002 but the container it's in is kinda small and I did notice it bumping up against the wall which could be throwing it off.

You can check out the log at this link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bgqFGiec-0_Fk7vdNA1J4Ec0z7HewjOtBIC-p9qrO5g/edit?usp=sharing

FWIW my hydrometer reads .999 in the same water.

Brewing this weekend and can't wait to see how it performs!
 
BrunDog said:
Good to see the sheets graphing working, but I don't understand why the app can't do the graphing right in it. It's not a lot of data relative to available memory. Even if it plots occasional data, general graphs could be assembled.
Click to expand...

Totally, I'd love a nice pretty graph feature built into the app, with a way to export them out to share online.
 
TravelingLight said:
Man, I hate having to reading a hydrometer bobbing in my beer. Y'all keep talking this thing up and I'm going to have to bite the bullet!
Click to expand...

Do it! I'm pretty happy with mine and can't wait to get the second one.

beskone said:
Totally, I'd love a nice pretty graph feature built into the app, with a way to export them out to share online.
Click to expand...

I don't get it, with things the way are now, the graphs are already online for you to share. In fact, anyone that wants can just view my entire sheet here.

Personally I love the Google Docs integration. Zero down time, zero chance of data loss, and you can configure any sort of graph or metrics you want off of the data.
 
drgonzo2k2 said:
Do it! I'm pretty happy with mine and can't wait to get the second one.



I don't get it, with things the way are now, the graphs are already online for you to share. In fact, anyone that wants can just view my entire sheet here.

Personally I love the Google Docs integration. Zero down time, zero chance of data loss, and you can configure any sort of graph or metrics you want off of the data.
Click to expand...

I like the google integration too, especially for raw data collection and archiving. But I'd still like some really shiny pretty graphs available within the app with an easy way to share them out.

Setting up one of the (not that pretty) charts in google is fine, but then exporting that out to be able to share is just extra steps I would rather not deal with.

Seems like it would be a simple add to the app and I think people would find value in being able to look at their device, hit a "graph" button, then a "share" button and post it up here, or wherever in just a few seconds.
 
Any of you app developers know if this could run / upload to google docs in a ios or android emulator? I don't have a spare phone / tablet, but have some spare pcs...
 
My feeling is in between. Graph on the device. If you want it shared, use the current method.

I think there is utility in the graph to make sure your temps are as expected and that the SG has leveled off, indicating fermentation is done and cleanup is taking place. That said, I don't really know who would give a crap about your "fermentation graph". Once you have seen one, you have seen them all, and there is not much utility left. Unless you are in a brew club and are monitoring a batch together, I don't see the point of giving access to others to look.
 
mhermetz said:
My club is currently trying to see if they would do a bulk buy. Hell even if we save on shipping that would be sweet.
Click to expand...

Count me in for one if you guys do a group buy. I am in Toronto. PM me if it goes forward!
 
BrunDog said:
My feeling is in between. Graph on the device. If you want it shared, use the current method.

I think there is utility in the graph to make sure your temps are as expected and that the SG has leveled off, indicating fermentation is done and cleanup is taking place. That said, I don't really know who would give a crap about your "fermentation graph". Once you have seen one, you have seen them all, and there is not much utility left. Unless you are in a brew club and are monitoring a batch together, I don't see the point of giving access to others to look.
Click to expand...

I would be posting the fermentation graphs to my brewday blog that I use to document my brews.

I could see people geeking out on comparing graphs and looking for fermentation patterns for different yeasts / OG / etc... Especially if you had a thread where all the graphs were posted for a particular strain where you could quickly compare a bunch of different fermentations. Maybe it's just me that's into it because I'm a nerd like that.
 
beskone said:
I would be posting the fermentation graphs to my brewday blog that I use to document my brews.

I could see people geeking out on comparing graphs and looking for fermentation patterns for different yeasts / OG / etc... Especially if you had a thread where all the graphs were posted for a particular strain where you could quickly compare a bunch of different fermentations. Maybe it's just me that's into it because I'm a nerd like that.
Click to expand...

I would geek out on that too ;)

Of course, having all the data in a Google Doc would make doing so even easier, as you could add all the plot points together and have a single graph showing the various performance across all of your parameters, vs. lots of individual graphs to compare.
 
I have published a python program that runs on a RaspberryPi (with appropriate Bluetooth 4 dongle) that intercepts the BLE broadcast transmissions and can upload them to a MQTT topic.
It will also work on a regular PC running Linux (it depends on the Linux BlueZ stack).

I am working on supporting publishing to Google Sheets.

The link is: https://github.com/tmclane/brewmonitor
 
brewslinger said:
I have published a python program that runs on a RaspberryPi (with appropriate Bluetooth 4 dongle) that intercepts the BLE broadcast transmissions and can upload them to a MQTT topic.
It will also work on a regular PC running Linux (it depends on the Linux BlueZ stack).

I am working on supporting publishing to Google Sheets.

The link is: https://github.com/tmclane/brewmonitor
Click to expand...

Very nice, you just saved me a chunk of the weekend! Guess I can cut the grass after all...
:mug:
 
pwnshop said:
Count me in for one if you guys do a group buy. I am in Toronto. PM me if it goes forward!
Click to expand...

Its a no go on the group buy. They can't afford to bring down the price for it. We're just waiting to see if they can bulk package them to save on shipping now.
 
Purchased. Pulling samples to check gravity is probably my second least favorite thing about brewing.
 
I would love if you could input what type of yeast and style is being fermented so we could all compare strain performance. Just sayin...:D
 
You can add comments from the app that will populate on the google doc.

Vandulus said:
I would love if you could input what type of yeast and style is being fermented so we could all compare strain performance. Just sayin...:D
Click to expand...
 
brewslinger said:
I have published a python program that runs on a RaspberryPi (with appropriate Bluetooth 4 dongle) that intercepts the BLE broadcast transmissions and can upload them to a MQTT topic.
It will also work on a regular PC running Linux (it depends on the Linux BlueZ stack).

I am working on supporting publishing to Google Sheets.

The link is: https://github.com/tmclane/brewmonitor
Click to expand...


Hmm... This makes me wonder how easy it would be to modify the brewpi code to log the gravity readings and plot them on the same graph... No need for temperature logging since brewpi already does that, but I guess that might be useful for calibration purposes.
 
Hi all,

For those of you (like me) having issues with calibration and inaccurate readings the new version of the app (iOS) should hit the app store in 5-10 days apparently. I'm told a major fix will be allowing calibration settings to actually to be stored in the app. Mine keeps losing the calibrated settings currently, rendering it pretty much useless right now.

I got the impression the new android version is already in the wild, haven't confirmed this though.
 
Just a quick note on their customer service: I had contacted them after my initial test that seemed to reveal a faulty unit, I told them that I would drop it in my fermenter and keep them posted. I received this email from them yesterday:
"David,
Is your Brewometer functioning correctly? I want to make sure you don't have a faulty unit. Please let me know, i can send you a new one if the problem persists. We appreciate any feedback.
Have a great weekend!
Cheers,"

It seems like these guys are willing to back up their product and make it better!
 
I got mine in last night, it will connect to one phone without an issue, but not the other. So far looks to work great though. I'll try again today to get it connecting to the other phone, let you guys know.
 
yeastylad said:
Hi all,

For those of you (like me) having issues with calibration and inaccurate readings the new version of the app (iOS) should hit the app store in 5-10 days apparently. I'm told a major fix will be allowing calibration settings to actually to be stored in the app. Mine keeps losing the calibrated settings currently, rendering it pretty much useless right now.

I got the impression the new android version is already in the wild, haven't confirmed this though.
Click to expand...


How off could the temp or SG be? If it's just a basic offset, just do the math in your head. Don't see how that's useless. Yes the app should keep the calibration but this isn't a deal breaker IMO.
 
drgonzo2k2 said:
Does the second phone have Bluetooth 4.0?
Click to expand...

Nope, I ended up using a different phone this AM after figuring that out. I have it reporting to a spreadsheet now as well. It just jump about some, having gone from 1.007 to 1.009 and temp looks a solid 3-4f higher than it is. I probably just need to calibrate.
 
BrunDog said:
How off could the temp or SG be? If it's just a basic offset, just do the math in your head. Don't see how that's useless. Yes the app should keep the calibration but this isn't a deal breaker IMO.
Click to expand...

I'm a strong supporter of the product, and have had very productive communication with the team behind it. I'm not writing it off, I just have no idea how the app was written, i don't even know whether the app does temperature compensation for gravity. So i would be speculating at actual readings by doing the math in my head, as you put it. My readings are way off, by the way. 5 to 10 degrees F and up to 10 gravity points.
 

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