CraftBeerPi - Raspberry Pi Software

[NeoBrew]

What about driving the relays direct from a Pi zero using 3v3? That still works ok without any issues?

Yes, I meant that. By breakout board I just meant the extension kind that let's you not solder directly to the Pi.

 

[toadyus]

In my humble opinion the Terragaddy boards are just an unnecessary complexity. They are really built to drive 12v relays/ssr's. If you don't need that, they are overkill. I built one and found that I could neither fully troubleshoot it or make all things (like the buzzer) work correctly. After using it for about 6 months something went wrong and some contacts stopped working and it shorted out my Pi. That is not to say that the board isn't a good product. I'm sure the quality control problems were my own fabrication faults. But for me figuring out how to troubleshoot it cost me two Raspberry Pi's. I switched to just a simple breakout board driving relays at 5v and things went much smoother.

The reason the board is 12v's was to drive ssr's and pumps. Also, because most people bought crappy cheap ones from China, which in most tests I found wouldn't turn on with 5v's. If you have good SSR's, you don't have to worry about that. Also I highly doubt you fried pi's with the Terragady board setup correctly as I have had someone run 50 amps x 240 volts directly into the board and he's still alive, just short one BC337. The only way you fried a Pi is if you somehow sent more than 5v's through to pin 2, which is not good and many have done it by not setting the MP1584 up properly before connecting to the Pi.

The terragady board was a damn good board, but unfortunately it lacks all the nice new shiny features and was a pain to solder with all the individual parts. I'm in the midst of creating a new board and here is a sneak peak and yes this one supports rpi4.

 

[Gravitysucks]

The reason the board is 12v's was to drive ssr's and pumps. Also, because most people bought crappy cheap ones from China, which in most tests I found wouldn't turn on with 5v's. If you have good SSR's, you don't have to worry about that. Also I highly doubt you fried pi's with the Terragady board setup correctly as I have had someone run 50 amps x 240 volts directly into the board and he's still alive, just short one BC337. The only way you fried a Pi is if you somehow sent more than 5v's through to pin 2, which is not good and many have done it by not setting the MP1584 up properly before connecting to the Pi.

The terragady board was a damn good board, but unfortunately it lacks all the nice new shiny features and was a pain to solder with all the individual parts. I'm in the midst of creating a new board and here is a sneak peak and yes this one supports rpi4.

View attachment 637505

It's nice to see that you are going with a ULN2803 to simplify your board. I questioned why more of the CBPi board makers didn't go this route a while ago.

Have you looked into the heat issues with the Pi4? In most of the reviews I've seen testers have said that active cooling measures are really the only way to avoid throttling issues and the Pi forum is full of talk about heat and throttling on the Pi4. This makes full size hats hard to use unless they are connected with a ribbon cable. RaspberryPi.org issued a firmware update which helped with the heat issue some but didn't completely eliminate the problem. Maybe someone could build a CBPi board that is offset or sits at 90 degrees to the Pi board like video cards sit on a PC motherboard that would allow the use of active coolers while still being plugged directly to the GPIO pins.

 

[Bigdaddyale]

In my humble opinion the Terragaddy boards are just an unnecessary complexity. They are really built to drive 12v relays/ssr's. If you don't need that, they are overkill. I built one and found that I could neither fully troubleshoot it or make all things (like the buzzer) work correctly. After using it for about 6 months something went wrong and some contacts stopped working and it shorted out my Pi. That is not to say that the board isn't a good product. I'm sure the quality control problems were my own fabrication faults. But for me figuring out how to troubleshoot it cost me two Raspberry Pi's. I switched to just a simple breakout board driving relays at 5v and things went much smoother.

Not sure this was your problem but a bunch of people fried their rpi's by not setting the voltage correctly on the mp1584.

 

[NeoBrew]

The reason the board is 12v's was to drive ssr's and pumps. Also, because most people bought crappy cheap ones from China, which in most tests I found wouldn't turn on with 5v's. If you have good SSR's, you don't have to worry about that. Also I highly doubt you fried pi's with the Terragady board setup correctly as I have had someone run 50 amps x 240 volts directly into the board and he's still alive, just short one BC337. The only way you fried a Pi is if you somehow sent more than 5v's through to pin 2, which is not good and many have done it by not setting the MP1584 up properly before connecting to the Pi.

The terragady board was a damn good board, but unfortunately it lacks all the nice new shiny features and was a pain to solder with all the individual parts. I'm in the midst of creating a new board and here is a sneak peak and yes this one supports rpi4.

View attachment 637505

It could be that my original problem was over-voltage due to not setting the regulator properly. At some point there became a short that I could not isolate. The board was feeding 12v back into other parts of the board. As I said, I'm confident the problem was my poor workmanship and inability to diagnose the location of the problem properly.

I thank you for your work and making your products available to all of us. It was instrumental in making CraftBeer Pi accessible to a knucklehead like me.

 

[LBussy]

Have you looked into the heat issues with the Pi4? In most of the reviews I've seen testers have said that active cooling measures are really the only way to avoid throttling issues and the Pi forum is full of talk about heat and throttling on the Pi4.

I can confirm the Pi 4 is troublesome without active cooling. I just posted my findings and solution here.

@toadyus: As long as you are creating a board, and there does seem to be ample room on the PCB, I'd suggest you make a hole and a 2-pin header for a small fan. That would be nice for everyone and almost vital for Pi 4 users.

 

[toadyus]

I can confirm the Pi 4 is troublesome without active cooling. I just posted my findings and solution here.

@toadyus: As long as you are creating a board, and there does seem to be ample room on the PCB, I'd suggest you make a hole and a 2-pin header for a small fan. That would be nice for everyone and almost vital for Pi 4 users.

yeah, that's a great idea! The rpi4 seems to be a mess right now first it was the usb-c connector snafu and now issues with over heating, I'm wondering what the next issue is going to be.

 

[LBussy]

The rpi4 seems to be a mess right now first it was the usb-c connector snafu and now issues with over heating

I see the overheating as more a design snafu for the case developers. Easy enough to make it 3/8" higher and include a $0.35 fan. I have a few different USB-C power supples and was unable to figure out what they were talking about.

The network speed increase especialy is very nice.

 

[Lalo_uy]

Maybe someone could build a CBPi board that is offset or sits at 90 degrees to the Pi board like video cards sit on a PC motherboard that would allow the use of active coolers while still being plugged directly to the GPIO pins.

If the conector is near the edge you can put one of this:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/325...chweb0_0,searchweb201602_2,searchweb201603_52

 

[toadyus]

If the connector is near the edge you can put one of this:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32596198543.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.15fd415a4ZmrYs&algo_pvid=b7291659-a058-429e-aea1-b9f2373efb6c&algo_expid=b7291659-a058-429e-aea1-b9f2373efb6c-11&btsid=00e1cc2f-3403-4198-b6cc-06b0e3312e68&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_2,searchweb201603_52

Just imagine the size of the case you would need if you wanted to go vertical. I think the addition of a 5v port for a case fan is the better option.

 

[Lalo_uy]

Just imagine the size of the case you would need if you wanted to go vertical. I think the addition of a 5v port for a case fan is the better option.

I agree, but Gravitysucks want the board vertical as a VGA in a motherboard. A laptop fan, that blows lateral will be a perfect choice.

 

[Gravitysucks]

Just imagine the size of the case you would need if you wanted to go vertical. I think the addition of a 5v port for a case fan is the better option.

I only have what's being said on the various Pi forums to go by since I cancelled my Pi4 order when I started to read about the heat and power issues but a number of people have complained that it is no longer possible to use full size hats on the Pi4 without causing over heating/throttling issues since they trap the heat coming off the cpu. I suppose you could get one of the fan type cpu coolers to work if you could find a tall enough riser to put between the Pi and the hat to allow unrestricted airflow but I'm not sure a conventional case type fan would provide enough cooling.
As I said, I'm only going by what I've read on the forums. You may have seen something else entirely. Hopefully the Pi Foundation will get the problems figured out.

 

[day_trippr]

It isn't too big a deal to physically extend the GPIO interface header to allow something to be tucked between Pi and hat, it's likely only a matter of days before someone comes up with a "chill hat" with a skinny fan that can be topped with standard profile hats. Like the POE hat, but stackable with enough of an air gap to work.

Meanwhile...

Cheers! (yeah, it's a 3B, but the point remains. The Org done screwed the pooch this time)

 

[Gravitysucks]

It isn't too big a deal to physically extend the GPIO interface header to allow something to be tucked between Pi and hat, it's likely only a matter of days before someone comes up with a "chill hat" with a skinny fan that can be topped with standard profile hats. Like the POE hat, but stackable with enough of an air gap to work.

Meanwhile...

Cheers! (yeah, it's a 3B, but the point remains. The Org done screwed the pooch this time)

That was one of the coolers I had seen before I asked about the possibility of a CBPi board that sits 90 degrees to the Pi.

 

[day_trippr]

There's too much investment in RPi hats for the problem to be dodged for long. Given the POE hat has been around awhile it's just a couple of baby steps to knock out a stackable version that would optimally work with an RPi4. And given nobody is running GPIO fast enough for some long headers to matter I have to believe a good solution will happen.

Heck, Lee B. could knock one out in a couple of hours

Cheers!

 

[LBussy]

 

[Alt]

Nice to see a flourish of CBPi V4.0 commits on GitHub this week. Looks to still be a ways off from beta status though.

 

[boggy62000]

Hi,
obviously a known issue but I am stucked for 2 days now. Installing CBPI3 on a "new" pi 3 B 1.2 board and looks like it does not start either locally or through SSH (access deny). I tried many raspbians (jessie etc.) without success; I restarted many times from scratch.
I get message like "impossible to read config/craftbeerpiboot: no such file ..."
Can you provide some guidance as I did it a year ago without issue ?

 

[Lalo_uy]

The insta has to be run as root with sudo

 

[boggy62000]

Thanks for the answer:
I used sudo ./install.sh
I don't know where to find the installation log:

i get ( sorry it is in french)


fatal: impossible de se connecter à git.drogon.net :
git.drogon.net[0: 2a03:9800:10:7b::2]: errno=Connexion refusée
git.drogon.net[1: 188.246.205.22]: errno=Connexion refusée

Could not open requirements file: [Errno 2] Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type: 'requirements.txt'
mv: impossible d'évaluer './config/splash.png': Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type
sed: impossible de lire config/craftbeerpiboot: Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type
sed: impossible de lire config/craftbeerpiboot: Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type
fatal: ni ceci ni aucun de ses répertoires parents n'est un dépôt git : .git
fatal: ni ceci ni aucun de ses répertoires parents n'est un dépôt git : .git
fatal: ni ceci ni aucun de ses répertoires parents n'est un dépôt git : .git

 

[boggy62000]

OK. I managed to access it following advices bellow. looks like dependencies are now outdated.
Be carefull to backup your SD card before reinstalling it...
https://www.reddit.com/r/craftbeerpi/comments/brx8xt/cbpi3_woes/

Hope it may help new users.

 

[boggy62000]

OK. Now I have access to Craftbeerpi3 interface but choosing the relayboard type for actors (pumps & heater) result in them being on as default : I believe they are inverted in CBPI3.
Also when I activate the heater, it turns it off. But when i do it for pump, nothing happens: it stays on.

Any advice to proceed ?

 

[boggy62000]

Easiest way for me (and probably other candidates to install CBPI3) would be to get an SD disk image: in my case one working for Raspberry PI 3 B v1.2.
If somebody can be kind enough to share such a compressed file ?

Thanks.

 

[Lalo_uy]

OK. Now I have access to Craftbeerpi3 interface but choosing the relayboard type for actors (pumps & heater) result in them being on as default : I believe they are inverted in CBPI3.
Also when I activate the heater, it turns it off. But when i do it for pump, nothing happens: it stays on.

Any advice to proceed ?

Realyboard actors are the inverse of GPIO ones. Just change if they are inverted for your hardware.

 

[boggy62000]

Yes but GPIO or relays get same (wrong) results in my case

So I am progressing :
1. I installed craftbeerpi SD image I found here: http://unofficialpi.org/Distros/CraftBeerPiOS/ and follow the provided guide.
2. Due to "requirements" issue, I run "pi install -r requirements.txt" command to complete installation
3. I manually updated my WPA WIFI setup using
sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

and now I have access to craftbeerpi2 and will check I can activate pumps, probes correctly.

looks like a sherlock holmes story to me. I will clearly welcome V4

 

[boggy62000]

Last update:
Heating SSR is working fine but the pumps using 5v relays are always on when chosen GPIO pins are connected. Inverted box checked does not change anything. Something is still wrong in my config.

 

[swimIan]

Last update:
Heating SSR is working fine but the pumps using 5v relays are always on when chosen GPIO pins are connected. Inverted box checked does not change anything. Something is still wrong in my config.

Check how you wired your pump on the relay board. I image using Com and NC (normally closed) will yield an always on state regardless of the relay board actor settings. Try using Com and NO (normally open). The OFF state will prevent voltage from Com getting tinted NO contact because voltage will be going to the NC contact (nothing connected). The ON state will send voltage from Com to NO, thus turning on your pump.

 

[Yury]

I have already installed 3 times Raspbery and CBPI 3.0 can not start - error This site can’t be reached 192.168.43.5 refused to connect. Help me please.

 

[boggy62000]

Check how you wired your pump on the relay board. I image using Com and NC (normally closed) will yield an always on state regardless of the relay board actor settings. Try using Com and NO (normally open). The OFF state will prevent voltage from Com getting tinted NO contact because voltage will be going to the NC contact (nothing connected). The ON state will send voltage from Com to NO, thus turning on your pump.

thanks for the support: I believe relays wiring is correct (GPIO (x2) + 5V + ground) as it was ok before and when I unplug the GPIO cable, relay led turns off.

As configuration does not work correctly through CBPI hardware configuration, where can I find the file to edit & put COM and NO ?

 

[Lalo_uy]

Last update:
the pumps using 5v relays

The GPIO output 3,3V , may be the 5V relay do not trigger.