brewpi stopped working

[winovino]

hi all. i have a diy brewpi i made awhile back but never got around to using.

the other day i decided to make a sour and planned to use the brewpi as the temp controller for souring.

i decided to run a quick test to see if my heat source could keep up, and all seemed to go well for about 2 days. Then the strange thing happened. I got home from work and noticed the brewpi stopped working at about midday.

It said the script was running and displayed the beer and fridge set values, but not the actual beer/fridge temps. It also didnt seem to be heating anymore.

I gave it a quick disconnect from the usb (running wheazy on an old laptop) and it seemed to be back to normal for the few hours before i went to bed.

This morning when i woke up i checked it again and it had began the same behavior of not working again right after i fell asleep last night.

upon checking the logs i got the following:
warning 2 temperature sensor disconnected from pin 18 address.....
info message 0 temp sensor connected pin 18 address... (same address

tried to reboot again to no avail

checked logs again and see
Arduino debug message: INFO MESSAGE 19: No peak detected. Drifting up after heating, current temp: 83.9, estimated peak: 118.4. Previous heat estimator: 0.004, New heat estimator: 0.002..

if i stop the script and restart it

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/brewpi/brewpi.py", line 674, in
ser.write('l')
File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/serial/serialposix.py", line 485, in write
raise SerialException('write failed: %s' % (v,))
serial.serialutil.SerialException: write failed: [Errno 5] Input/output error
Mar 29 2016 09:47:02 Notification: Script started for beer 'lacto'
Mar 29 2016 09:47:13 Found BrewPi v0.2.4, running commit 2a6f7f05
build 40, on an Arduino standard with a revC shield on port /dev/ttyACM0

Mar 29 2016 17:22:02 Error opening alternative serial port: could not open port /dev/ttyACM1: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/dev/ttyACM1'. Script will exit.

Mar 29 2016 17:23:02 Error opening serial port: could not open port /dev/ttyACM0: [Errno 19] No such device: '/dev/ttyACM0'. Trying alternative serial port /dev/ttyACM1.

at this point im not even sure if my issue is hardware or software, or even where to begin.

i'm tempted to do a wipe of brewpi and install via the new install instuctions (i built this one about a year ago) however i'm not linux savvy and had a hell of a time getting the drivers for the laptop im using installed and REALLY dont want to have to go through that again.

anyone have any helpful advice?

thanks in advance, and i'll owe ya a beer

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

This is usually due to a crappy USB cable being used, and or too long of a cable, and or its in an electrically noisy environmennt(next to your compressor, near a computer, etc) where electrical noise screws up the USB serial communication.

It also sounds like your probes are just not wired very solidly.

 

[winovino]

i changed out the temp probe i had submerged in the test water and got a reading again. perhaps it wasnt as "waterproof" as advertised. would a temp probe shorting cause this behavior?

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

It could yes. I wouldnt submerge the probes, even if they were waterproof they are not food safe for beer. Either thermowell it, or tape it to the side with some foam

 

[day_trippr]

With all the digital thermometers and probes I've used over the years, I've still yet to find one with a probe that was truly immune from fluid ingress. Don't immerse a naked probe.

But that has nothing to do with your listed problem. You're not going to short a probe using beer to the point that it croaks the Uno. You have a comm issue between the Uno and the BrewPi host (RPi or other). If you're not using a dedicated power supply for the Uno and instead are depending on the power provided it via its USB connection, a marginal cable can cause problems...

Cheers!

 

[winovino]

i stripped the heatshrink off the suspect probe and it dripped out rusted water lol. the sensor slipped out of the housing easily and one of the leads had completely rusted off the sensor.

glad i only had it in water to test lol

I dont have a dedicated psu for the arduino but is is on a rather robust and short cable and after changing the probe everything seems to be running smoothly again.

is it possible the comm errors where just there from when i was disconnecting the usb to reboot the arduino and the probe was really the entire issue?

 

[day_trippr]

[...]is it possible the comm errors where just there from when i was disconnecting the usb to reboot the arduino and the probe was really the entire issue?

LOL! Well, yeah, that's something that probably should have been mentioned
If you strip out the induced errors, what's left fingers a probe.

Glad it's up and running again.
Don't drown probes and you should be fine...

Cheers!

 

[winovino]

thanks!

mods feel free to delete this thread

 

[day_trippr]

That's not how forums work - thankfully.
This thread might help someone down the road.
If the mods flushed every thread that got resolved, we'd lose a lot of good information...

Cheers!