HOWTO - Make a BrewPi Fermentation Controller For Cheap

[Thorrak]

I got Raspbian reinstalled and went with fermentrack. Since the pi is all I currently own and there is nothing to communicate with I assume that is why nothing comes up when I type the 192.168.x.xx into my browser.

It should work/look like this if you type the IP address you were given in immediately after running the one line installer:


Just make sure you’re attempting to access it via http and not https.

If you aren’t seeing anything come up, that sounds like there was potentially an installation issue. I haven’t tested with Jessie lately, but I know it works with Stretch.

 

[DurtyChemist]

Fermentrack up and running. I re-ran the one line install. THANKFUKLLY it worked. I appreciate the input and now I know the newest format of NOOBS can't work with Brewpi but this does the exact same thing. Totally thought I smoked the memory card and ruined the whole project.

Now to figure out if I can get this to control my beer fridge and fermentation chamber with one RPI and Adurino and a 4 channel relay.

Oh yeah, I'm posting this from my RPI plugged into the TV. It's awesome.

 

[Thorrak]

Now to figure out if I can get this to control my beer fridge and fermentation chamber with one RPI and Adurino and a 4 channel relay.

Oh yeah, I'm posting this from my RPI plugged into the TV. It's awesome.

Unfortunately, you’ll need two Arduinos/2-channel relay boards, but Fermentrack will allow both to be controlled from the same Pi.

Glad to hear it’s working - good luck!

 

[DurtyChemist]

Unfortunately, you’ll need two Arduinos/2-channel relay boards, but Fermentrack will allow both to be controlled from the same Pi.

Glad to hear it’s working - good luck!

Can you explain why I'd need two Unos? I've seen christmas light setups using one Uno so I figured the 4 channel relay could control 4 outlets separately each with a probe (theoretically) for on/off. I thought the Uno controlled all the channels it's connected to.

 

[CadiBrewer]

Each Uo has a separate instance of the BrewPi firmware running on it. Fermentrack or the original BrewPi web interface sends updated control info to the Uno, but the Uno runs standalone waiting for further input from the software. Due to that limitation you need an Uno for each chamber. But you can use the 4 channel relay instead of two, two channel relays.

 

[CadiBrewer]

By the way, don't look at having two separate controllers as necessarily a bad thing. Depending upon the physical layout of your space, often times it is more convenient to have your controller attached to your fermentation vessel and not physically attached to your raspberry pi. You can use Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and have your raspberry pi anywhere it is convenient.

 

[DurtyChemist]

By the way, don't look at having two separate controllers as necessarily a bad thing. Depending upon the physical layout of your space, often times it is more convenient to have your controller attached to your fermentation vessel and not physically attached to your raspberry pi. You can use Bluetooth or Wi-Fi and have you raspberry pi anywhere it is convenient.

I'm very much hoping to use bluetooth and wifi as much as possible with the UNOs. I could put the RPI either in the garage at a different location, or on the other side of the wall inside the house. If the signal is strong enough this will become important for the next living quarters.

 

[CadiBrewer]

Unless you already have the second Uno, I'd look at using an esp8266 d1 mini or the like. @Thorrak has made setup on those little guys flawless. You can get Bluetooth to work on the Uno with a separate Bluetooth chip, but it can be a little fiddley.

 

[Bigdaddyale]

Unless you already have the second Uno, I'd look at using an esp8266 d1 mini or the like. @Thorrak has made setup on those little guys flawless. You can get Bluetooth to work on the Uno with a separate Bluetooth chip, but it can be a little fiddley.

ESP8266 and one of Thorrak's boards is a sweet setup.

 

[DurtyChemist]

I s aw the ESP8266 builds but honestly, I couldn't really follow it and didn't see much of a "how to build" sheet. It looked like the boards have to be manually constructed then added with whatever else they need. I'll look into it more but for some reason it seemed harder to go that way to use the Raspberry Pi through wifi and bluetooth than the Uno.

I haven't bought anything. Someone gave me the Pi and I figured I'd use it for fermentation before I realized how cool of a thing it is. I've only looked into a few projects with it.

 

[CadiBrewer]

The BrewPi controller is a great first build for a Raspberry Pi. You can make it as easy or as complicated as you want. If you want to go easy, get an Uno or an esp8266 and all of the parts listed on the first page of this thread. You can even use wire nuts instead of the wiring block shown in the picture. You can then connect that via USB to your Pi and you're off an running. If you want to go wi-fi, it is a bit more difficult getting the esp to be seen correctly by your wi-fi, but it really is very simple. You don't need one of @Thorrak's boards for an easy build, you can just connect your probes and the relays directly to the Uno or esp. It only really gets a bit complicated if you want to add an LCD and or a rotary encoder (a push button dial that you can use to set parameters on the controller without going into the web interface). If you do either or both of those, you'll need a PCB board and some soldering. It is still a novice level thing to accomplish and many here have. Whatever you do, enjoy. It is a fun project that will surprise you at how accurately it can control your brewing temps.

 

[DurtyChemist]

I think I’m going to do the UNO with USB connection to the pi with a 4 channel relay to control 4 outlets and two probes. 1 won’t be used. The other three outlets would be fermentation cooling (upright freezer), fermentation heating (heat wrap) and my kegerator. I’m assuming the pi will recognize 1 probe for fermentation temperatures, and 1 probe for kegerator just like having two fermentation chambers. Kegerator probe says it’s too hot so cooling turns on. Fermentation probe says too cold so turn on heat.


Am I wrong in my thinking of how this will work?

 

[Thorrak]

I think I’m going to do the UNO with USB connection to the pi with a 4 channel relay to control 4 outlets and two probes. 1 won’t be used. The other three outlets would be fermentation cooling (upright freezer), fermentation heating (heat wrap) and my kegerator. I’m assuming the pi will recognize 1 probe for fermentation temperatures, and 1 probe for kegerator just like having two fermentation chambers. Kegerator probe says it’s too hot so cooling turns on. Fermentation probe says too cold so turn on heat.


Am I wrong in my thinking of how this will work?

Yes, unfortunately. Each uno can only control one fermentation chamber (including in your case, kegerator). You can use a 4 channel relay in theory, but in practice you would be using it as if it were two 2-channel relays - with 2 channels being controlled by each of the unos.

 

[day_trippr]

Correct. The firmware running on the Uno represents just one chamber worth of math and control which is able to keep the chamber running even if the web host dies a horrible flaming death.
So, one needs (n) UNOs to control (n) chambers, which at $5 per UNO plus a couple of bucks for a wall wart is hardly punitive, and they can all be run from the same web host, and share sections of multi-channel relay modules.
The cold side of my humble brewery currently has two ferm fridges, one carb/conditioning fridge, and a keezer, all controlled by a set of four UNOs managed by a single BrewPi web host running on an RPI2B, three of which linked via Bluetooth and the keezer UNO running on USB.

When sharing multi-channel relay modules between UNOs, try to power the module with an "always on" source to allow powering down one UNO without affecting another UNO's control functionality...

Cheers!

 

[DurtyChemist]

$5 UNO?!? Where?

 

[Thorrak]

$5 UNO?!? Where?

I mean, it’s a knock off Uno, but....

http://s.aliexpress.com/v632AFVf

 

[Thorrak]

Minion MK3...now with Reset button

View attachment 563280

The button restores the symmetry that was disturbed with the MK2 rotary encoder addition. My inner OCD sufferer prefers symmetry.

Cheers!

[edit] In case anyone's wondering...

Minion MK1

View attachment 563294

Minion MK2

View attachment 563295

Out of curiosity what enclosure are you using?

 

[day_trippr]

My minion fleet uses Philmore PB130 boxes I stumbled upon locally years ago.

It's a tight fit cramming everything into that volume but I really like the small footprint...

Cheers!

 

[DurtyChemist]

Ordered everything off Alibaba today. We shall see when it arrives and what kind of quality I get from $11 of stuff that was closer to $60 on Amazon.

 

[DurtyChemist]

Edit: Apparently I must not have had my order processed. Reordered for less than $10. I'll need to buy a power cord, wall outlet and something to put this in when it gets here. 20-39 days and everything but the resistor came from the Fruit Pi store.

 

[petrolSpice]

I have a few questions about BrewPi...

1) Can the PID function be turned off such that it acts simply as a high-low limit switch (like an STC-1000)?
2) Can it be configured such that it only tries to maintain the temperature inside the fridge and ignores the temperature of the beer?

I will not be using this for homebrewing, but rather for a work project where I need a temperature controller that can accept temperature vs. time profiles.

 

[Thorrak]

I have a few questions about BrewPi...

1) Can the PID function be turned off such that it acts simply as a high-low limit switch (like an STC-1000)?
2) Can it be configured such that it only tries to maintain the temperature inside the fridge and ignores the temperature of the beer?

I will not be using this for homebrewing, but rather for a work project where I need a temperature controller that can accept temperature vs. time profiles.

1 - Kind of. That’s basically how the fridge constant mode works.

2 - Yep. That’s how the fridge constant mode works.

The problem is that there isn’t a “fridge profile” mode in BrewPi. One could be hacked in by edits to BrewPi-script, however, if one was so inclined.

 

[KLucky_13]

I have been using my brewpi setup for over a year and never had major issues. Last month we moved to a different house with a different internet provider. It's been a long time since I had to set up the brewpi and now I'm stuck to get the port forwarding bit working again.

In my local network I can reach the brewpi both with the page without controls (by just entering the device Ip adress) and the full control page by going to 192.168.0.x/admin.php. So all that stuff still works perfectly. BUT, with my previous provider port forwarding towards port 80 (default port on raspberry) worked straight away without hassle. Now with this new provider I tried about everything and still can't get the port to correctly forward to the device.

I want to try it from a different port (so not the default 80 port). But can somebody tell me where I need to change this in the brewpi installation so it listens to the new port?

 

[Thorrak]

I have been using my brewpi setup for over a year and never had major issues. Last month we moved to a different house with a different internet provider. It's been a long time since I had to set up the brewpi and now I'm stuck to get the port forwarding bit working again.

In my local network I can reach the brewpi both with the page without controls (by just entering the device Ip adress) and the full control page by going to 192.168.0.x/admin.php. So all that stuff still works perfectly. BUT, with my previous provider port forwarding towards port 80 (default port on raspberry) worked straight away without hassle. Now with this new provider I tried about everything and still can't get the port to correctly forward to the device.

I want to try it from a different port (so not the default 80 port). But can somebody tell me where I need to change this in the brewpi installation so it listens to the new port?

I had an internet provider which did the same thing (blocking incoming traffic on port 80) so I think you may be on the right track. You've got two options on how to do this --


Change the Port Forwarding

For my router at least, when setting up the ports to allow through/NAT redirection, there's a "from" and "to" port. I think I've seen this on a number of routers. If you set the "from" port to something other than 80 and set the "to" port to 80, you should achieve what you want without having to touch your Apache configuration. For me the setting looks like this:




Change the Apache Port

If your router can't support port redirection (or you don't have a router) you can also change the port that Apache listens on (assuming you're using apache which most BrewPi installations are). Take a look at the answer to this question on StackExchange and it should explain how to do that.

 

[Boonie]

If I were to implement this function, I'd ditch the Pi and Arduino and go with just a $10 ESP32.
It can do both the temp controlling and web/internet stuff. No unix/Pi required.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0718T232Z/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[day_trippr]

Let us know when you have your design working...reliably - like, running for a full year without a crash...

Cheers!

 

[Thorrak]

If I were to implement this function, I'd ditch the Pi and Arduino and go with just a $10 ESP32.
It can do both the temp controlling and web/internet stuff. No unix/Pi required.

You could always take a stab at porting @pocketmon ’s BrewPiLess to the ESP32. It’s basically what you’re describing.

That said, unless you either have a need for the extra pins/radio or want the project, I would give the ESP32 a bit more time to mature before taking the project on, and stick to the ESP8266. From my experience the tool chain still isn’t anywhere near where the Arduino or ESP8266 are.

 

[Boonie]

You could always take a stab at porting @pocketmon ’s BrewPiLess to the ESP32. It’s basically what you’re describing.

That said, unless you either have a need for the extra pins/radio or want the project, I would give the ESP32 a bit more time to mature before taking the project on, and stick to the ESP8266. From my experience the tool chain still isn’t anywhere near where the Arduino or ESP8266 are.

I'm busy working on a much bigger project right now. I'll announce it here when I finish up the prototype.
Basic unit uses the 8266, full blown needs the 32. Board is socketed to accept either.
Tool chain hasn't really been a hindrance since I'm writing my own device drivers. Other libraries I need already work.

 

[Thorrak]

I'm busy working on a much bigger project right now. I'll announce it here when I finish up the prototype.
Basic unit uses the 8266, full blown needs the 32. Board is socketed to accept either.
Tool chain hasn't really been a hindrance since I'm writing my own device drivers. Other libraries I need already work.

Huh. That's good to know. The last time I tried cross-compiling something it failed miserably, but admittedly that was a few months ago. I've got a different project I picked up the ESP32 for which I'm working on now, which explicitly won't work on the ESP8266 (it requires the bluetooth radio). I'll have to try again here later.

 

[DurtyChemist]

Ordered 4/16. Relay board, pin connectors, uno and probes showed up today. Waiting on the 100 resistors I bought and all I need is a cord, a box and an outlet.