HOWTO - Make a BrewPi Fermentation Controller For Cheap

[dirtybear7]

Hey All,

There is an updated version of the Raspberry Pi. It is the 2.0+
It looks like it has more USB ports among other things.

If you don't have one yet, this looks nice. If you have one already, I'm not sure it is worth replacing it.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/#introducing-raspberry-pi-model-b-plus

 

[wbarber69]

Yeah I've been trying to find a supplier on amazon that offers prime. They want like 12 bucks to ships a credit card.

 

[dirtybear7]

try http://www.adafruit.com/

I think they are also on Amazon and ship prime

 

[no_username_here]

Does anyone have their pi and arduino mounted?

I've got my pi in an enclosure and the arduino sitting on top of it. I'd like to figure a way of mounting the pi, uno and relay board more permanently.

 

[wbarber69]

Just zip tie them all together with some duct tape where needed

 

[joshindc]

I just completed my build and I had a couple suggestions to further reduce the cost by ~$10 or $15. Instead of buying a sainsmart UNO, I bought a Nano from tinkerVault for $10.99 on Amazon. It's tiny and tinkerVault sells it without headers attached. Then I just desoldered the header from the relay board (pull the black plastic part of the header off with a screwdriver first, and then it's easy to desolder 1 pin at a time). That let me easily solder the connections to the relay board and the Nano. Other sellers charge a buck or two more for the Nano but some of them come with female-female cables, which you could use to non-permanently connect the relay board if you want. It appears that the other sellers solder the male header onto the Nano.

I use a raspberry pi and the only change I made was to change the port to ttyUSB0 and ttyUSB1 as detailed in the first section of this page: http://docs.brewpi.com/after-install/program-arduino.html#troubleshooting
I used the UNO hex and just selected ATmega32 from the dropdown menu in the web interface when uploading the hex to the arduino.

The other suggestion I would make to save money: If you're making your own probes by soldering wires on a bare DS18B20, instead of buying the $12 thermowell from brewershardware buy the $4.75 12-inch straight protection tube. It's thinner so the premade sensor won't fit, but if you're making your own it'll save you $8, and the thinner sensor will respond faster to temperature changes (not sure this matters for this application). I use old ethernet cables and then you can use cat5 ports to connect everything up if you want. I pretty much follow this guide to make mine: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/make-your-own-precision-ss-temperature-probe-101192/

 

[no_username_here]

Just zip tie them all together with some duct tape where needed

That's what I'm trying to avoid. I'd like it to look nice and if that can't be accomplished I'd at least like to avoid the risk of any short circuiting.

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

I just completed my build and I had a couple suggestions to further reduce the cost by ~$10 or $15. Instead of buying a sainsmart UNO, I bought a Nano from tinkerVault for $10.99 on Amazon. It's tiny and tinkerVault sells it without headers attached. Then I just desoldered the header from the relay board (pull the black plastic part of the header off with a screwdriver first, and then it's easy to desolder 1 pin at a time). That let me easily solder the connections to the relay board and the Nano. Other sellers charge a buck or two more for the Nano but some of them come with female-female cables, which you could use to non-permanently connect the relay board if you want. It appears that the other sellers solder the male header onto the Nano.

I use a raspberry pi and the only change I made was to change the port to ttyUSB0 and ttyUSB1 as detailed in the first section of this page: http://docs.brewpi.com/after-install/program-arduino.html#troubleshooting
I used the UNO hex and just selected ATmega32 from the dropdown menu in the web interface when uploading the hex to the arduino.

The other suggestion I would make to save money: If you're making your own probes by soldering wires on a bare DS18B20, instead of buying the $12 thermowell from brewershardware buy the $4.75 12-inch straight protection tube. It's thinner so the premade sensor won't fit, but if you're making your own it'll save you $8, and the thinner sensor will respond faster to temperature changes (not sure this matters for this application). I use old ethernet cables and then you can use cat5 ports to connect everything up if you want. I pretty much follow this guide to make mine: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/make-your-own-precision-ss-temperature-probe-101192/

Good info, i like!

One thing i like about the Thermowells is that the end is flared, so it fits snug and seals properly in a standard drilled stopper, not sure if yours do that but its an easy fix regardless.

 

[joshindc]

Good info, i like!

One thing i like about the Thermowells is that the end is flared, so it fits snug and seals properly in a standard drilled stopper, not sure if yours do that but its an easy fix regardless.

They don't flare, but when I put heat shrink over the end for strain relief it makes a little ledge there. When I drill out my stopper I drill it small anyway, so I'm not worried at all about it falling in.

 

[wbarber69]

Just zip tie them all together with some duct tape where needed

 

[wbarber69]

I don't know where that second post came from

 

[Dolomieu]

I finally got my brewpi web interface to come back. Apparently I created two .htaccess files. One under /var/www and one under /var/www/private. this happened because wrote it via sudo nano while in /var/www. I'm a total code noob so i don't know how to just move that file. Once i know that it needed to be in /var/www/private i wrote the second file and didn't think the other file would matter so i left it.

As soon as i deleted the contents and over wrote the file sitting in /var/www, it popped right back up.

 

[Dolomieu]

This is so freaking awesome!!!! So after i got the file mix up above taken care of, i started looking back through the thread for the instructions to bounce it to the web. It's working! It loads a bit slow and my phone doesn't seem to want to load it consistently but it's a start.

I just want to thank everyone again for sharing not only the project but their issues because i was able to trouble shoot everything with a bit of reading. Thank you!

 

[robfar]

Any intermittent issues with ACM0 like this are because of a bad USB connection.

Either your cable is super long, your USB cable is too close to your power cables, your USB port on your PC sucks or a list of other things. I saw this quite a bit when i was using a PC with a longish(3 feet) USB cable, but never when using a RPI.

I suggest powering your Arduino via external power and or buying a USB cable with a ferrite choke/bead on it to prevent this external noise from bringing down your USB connection.

Its basically electrical noise getting onto your USB cable, killing power to it and then BrewPi tries to read it and its not there anymore...then it comes back up a few seconds later and keeps doing its thing.

External power may be your best option, its possible the USB port is just crap and not capable of supplying constant power that the Arduino needs.

Found a 5VDC wall wart and spliced on the right connector for the UNO. Definitely improved the situation from a script crash every 2-3 hours to 2 crashes in the last 12. Realized my USB cable is coming from the back of the PC along with the power cord and they both go through the same rathole into my chamber. Rerouted the USB cable to a front panel port and went into the chamber through its own hole. Fingers crossed.

 

[wbarber69]

USB and hdmi are both very susceptible to electrical interference. I found this out the hard way after I wired my home for network and a/v. First night living there after everything was finished, everytime the a/c kicks on all my TVs have to resync hdcp.

 

[webguru74]

anyone have any idea what this error is error:
Jul 17 2014 20:15:09 Socket error(32): Broken pipe
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/brewpi/brewpi.py", line 442, in
conn.send('ack')
error: [Errno 32] Broken pipe
Any help would be great

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

We need more context of when its happening...like the previous few pages of posts most connection/pipe errors are related to a bad USB connection, external power to the arduino is recommended.

 

[Dolomieu]

Does any one bounce their brewpi page to the web via port 443 rather than 80? I tried doing this with my router and it stopped my page from coming up off network. As soon as I switched the private port back to 80 it was fine.

 

[wbarber69]

Some ISPs block certain ports for some unknown reason

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

Yea im going to guess your ISP blocks port 443, it probably falls under their "Server port" list...most ISP's dont let you host servers unless you have business internet. Your normal user has no reason really to allow SSH traffic except to host a server.

 

[wbarber69]

Just use a different port

 

[Dolomieu]

Sounds reasonable enough. So you guys are just using 80 then?

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

Sounds reasonable enough. So you guys are just using 80 then?

I just wouldnt publish the external site, there are too many vulnerabilities that can be exploited by someone who knows its a BrewPi system.

If you use it externally i dont recommend posting the URL here or anywhere.
I took mine down, not that i was attacked but there has been proof that someone who knows its a BrewPi can trigger scripts with proper HTML calls, and theres nothing we can do to stop it really because BrewPi wasnt made for security.

 

[WhamFish]

I've just finished my set up and I'm testing it on water now. Many thanks to those posting in this thread, I referenced it a bunch during the build.

 

[wbarber69]

Ok my temp probes made it in today. I want to make sure I don't fry anything. I bought them on eBay through some Chinese manufacturer. The wires I have are yellow red green. Anybody know which wire is ground?

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

Ok my temp probes made it in today. I want to make sure I don't fry anything. I bought them on eBay through some Chinese manufacturer. The wires I have are yellow red green. Anybody know which wire is ground?

Red = 5vdc
Yellow = Signal
Green = Ground

 

[wbarber69]

Ok I wasnt sure because I get .80 ohms on red and .69 ohms on green when I use yellow as common. But no ohms across any other configuration.

 

[Dolomieu]

I just wouldnt publish the external site, there are too many vulnerabilities that can be exploited by someone who knows its a BrewPi system.

If you use it externally i dont recommend posting the URL here or anywhere.
I took mine down, not that i was attacked but there has been proof that someone who knows its a BrewPi can trigger scripts with proper HTML calls, and theres nothing we can do to stop it really because BrewPi wasnt made for security.

Yeah I have read that. It kind of sucks but since I know how to do this now, if I brew before leaving town I can set it up. I'll just change up the host names, not post them and hope no one happens upon it. It would only be up a couple days at a time. Remote access was a huge draw tothis project. I should probably just look into the VPN option, but the instructions for this option were just easier to find. Also well written out, thank you for that BTW.

 

[wbarber69]

Ok tried your suggested wire layout but it's not showing up in my devices. Should I try alternating the wires?

 

[wbarber69]

I got it!

Yellow = ground
Green = data
Red = 5v

 

[day_trippr]

Jeeze, that's yet another wiring scheme
The scheme that Fuzze provided was somewhat of a standard.
That's pretty much crapped the sheets now.

I've bought all of my probes off eBay from two suppliers and have been lucky enough to have all 12 probes with the red/white/black scheme...

Cheers!

 

[wbarber69]

Getting somewhere now!

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

Yeah I have read that. It kind of sucks but since I know how to do this now, if I brew before leaving town I can set it up. I'll just change up the host names, not post them and hope no one happens upon it. It would only be up a couple days at a time. Remote access was a huge draw tothis project. I should probably just look into the VPN option, but the instructions for this option were just easier to find. Also well written out, thank you for that BTW.

In reality the chances of you getting hacked is almost nil, the problem is the fact that the .1% chance you do get hacked by someone who understands the BrewPi API could ruin your beer or if your using an uncontrolled heater like a light bulb could start a fire by setting your fridge to some ridiculously high heat level and letting the bulb run 24/7...

But in theory i check my BrewPi several times a day to make sure its running properly anyways.

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

I got it!

Yellow = ground
Green = data
Red = 5v

Thats what you get with chinese manufacturing

No consistency.

 

[wbarber69]

I just hope it's the same for all 5 that came together

 

[wbarber69]

At least I know how to find the ground pin now using a tester. For everyone else. Set to ohms 2k. With 1 lead on com and the other on V-ohm. Start testing by taking 2 wires and placing one of each on a separate tester leg. When you get a reading look at your leads. The one attached to Vohm is your ground. Now keep that one attached to ground alternating the other 2 wires to read their values. The higher value is you 5v in and the lower value is data.

 

[robfar]

Wow, I got my Chinese probes from Nooelect on Amazon and they were yellow, red, green. The product detail said yellow, red, black. I emailed the seller asking was black changed to green for the ground. He replied that I was correct. They're working that way for me. This is crazy.

 

[wbarber69]

That's why it helps to check first. My second attempt rebooted the uno so I knew that was wrong. That's when I remembered the values I had pulled earlier (see earlier post) and tried with yellow ground. Once you know ground it's 50/50 after that.

 

[wbarber69]

Got 2 sensors hooked up and they use the same pinout! Now just to hack it all into the fridge. Still waiting on my pi b+ to show up.

 

[wbarber69]

Ok so regarding the chamber fan. How do I set it. Is it controlled by the heating/cooling or do I have to set it up in a script somewhere. I have the actuator set up for it already.