HOWTO - Make a BrewPi Fermentation Controller For Cheap

[LBussy]

guess I need to take a look at the php for that button!

Yeah, that's plain broken.

Found BrewPi v0.2.12 build 8d36524, running on an Arduino Uno with a revC shield on port /dev/ttyACM0.

Good deal! Now we can dig a little bit. I assume it's still not working? What state is your functionality?

 

[narddawg314]

Yeah, that's plain broken.


Good deal! Now we can dig a little bit. I assume it's still not working? What state is your functionality?

well now the knob does nothing. I saw someone in an older thread mention pin 7 to ground. Are you sure it was 8 or 9 and not 7?

 

[LBussy]

well now the knob does nothing.

Hey, we made a change! Only half being comedic, this is actually promising.

I saw someone in an older thread mention pin 7 to ground. Are you sure it was 8 or 9 and not 7?

Pin 7 to ground disables the screen timeout, but also would disable your rotary encoder. If you have that shorted (or the button pushed) when it starts up, that would be the result.

Does the screen turn on? Does it time out/blank at all?

 

[narddawg314]

Hey, we made a change! Only half being comedic, this is actually promising.

Pin 7 to ground disables the screen timeout, but also would disable your rotary encoder. If you have that shorted (or the button pushed) when it starts up, that would be the result.

Does the screen turn on? Does it time out/blank at all?

The LCD backlight goes off after a little while post bootup but does not come on when turning the knob. I also tested jumping 8 to ground with no joy, again 9 to ground and no joy there either.

 

[LBussy]

Remove the rotary encoder, jump 7 to ground, and reset (unplug/re-plug) the Arduino. The expected condition is that the LCD will not timeout.

 

[narddawg314]

Remove the rotary encoder, jump 7 to ground, and reset (unplug/re-plug) the Arduino. The expected condition is that the LCD will not timeout.

Solder a permanent jump wire between 7 and ground?

 

[LBussy]

No, this is for debug only. You just need to make sure the jumper is there while the Arduino starts up. It checks at that time and disables the screensaver if the point is grounded.

 

[narddawg314]

No, this is for debug only. You just need to make sure the jumper is there while the Arduino starts up. It checks at that time and disables the screensaver if the point is grounded.

Hmm. The rotary encoder is soldered in place on the pcb that is in between the LCD and Arduino. If I detach the encoder, I also detach the LCD. Is that an issue?

 

[LBussy]

Ah, well yeah, that would make it challenging to debug since we're expecting to see differences in the way the LCD works.

Without getting semi-destructive, I would unplug/replug all connectors and make sure there are no cold solder joints.

 

[narddawg314]

Ah, well yeah, that would make it challenging to debug since we're expecting to see differences in the way the LCD works.

Without getting semi-destructive, I would unplug/replug all connectors and make sure there are no cold solder joints.

I've got a nice little toggle switch laying around. How could I swap that in place of the rotary encoder? I don't make changes at the LCD anyway, but being able to turn on/off the LCD backlight would be nice

 

[LBussy]

A toggle will not (easily) help, unfortunately. The pin performs two functions:

1. Determine whether or not to enable screensaver (boot-time only)
2. Temporarily turn off screensaver if it has triggered (run-time)

If you are comfortable hacking in leads, you can use a toggle but I really hate that sort of solution. Something is broken and we should be able to figure out what and fix it.

What do you have on-hand? Do you have another Arduino? An I2C LCD? Another encoder?

 

[narddawg314]

A toggle will not (easily) help, unfortunately. The pin performs two functions:

1. Determine whether or not to enable screensaver (boot-time only)
2. Temporarily turn off screensaver if it has triggered (run-time)

If you are comfortable hacking in leads, you can use a toggle but I really hate that sort of solution. Something is broken and we should be able to figure out what and fix it.

What do you have on-hand? Do you have another Arduino? An I2C LCD? Another encoder?

I've got an old Leonardo but that's about it unfortunately. I could order a new rotary encoder

 

[LBussy]

Let me think about it for a few - maybe I can figure a way to get crafty.

 

[LBussy]

the rotary encoder I have will wake the lcd screen but I've never been able to use it for changing modes or anything...any thoughts on troubleshooting that? I am now using BrewPi Remix on Raspberry Pi OS and an arduino uno.

For anyone following along on this one - it ended up being a bad encoder.

 

[day_trippr]

"Bad" in what manner?
An autopsy is in order...

Cheers!

 

[H0phead]

Just wanted to report back on an issue I was experiencing back in June. I was getting SainSmart relay failures on my cooling circuit (I'm running a True GDM-23 commercial fridge as my fermentation chamber). It was believed that the load on the circuit (when the fridge started up) was soldering the internals of the relay and causing the relay to keep the circuit closed...this unfortunately resulted in a few frozen beers.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...tion-controller-for-cheap.466106/post-8898206
Many thanks to @LBussy @day_trippr @hinkensj for your suggestions.

I'm now running an Inkbird SSR-40 on the cold circuit and haven't had any issues since.

 

[LBussy]

Always love happy endings!

 

[LBussy]

Colter decided to do a re-run of the BrewPi Remix podcast yesterday I think it was:

https://homebrewingdiy.beer/index.php/2020/11/26/episode-64-re-run-brewpi-remix-with-lee-buss/

 

[AaronP]

In desperate need of help here! Just installed BrewPi Remix on top of RaspiOS on my RPi Zero W. Hit a snag with Apache, server didn't start. I followed instructions here Apache not starting in linux mint to start the service properly. However now when I access the web UI, all I see is a block of text starting with
<?php
/* Copyright (C) 2018, 2019 Lee C. Bussy (@LBussy)
*
* This file is part of LBussy's BrewPi WWW Remix (BrewPi-WWW-RMX).
*
* BrewPi WWW RMX is free software: you can redistribute it and/or
* modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
* published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
* License, or (at your option) any later version.
*
Apparently it is brewpi config. The UI itself isn't accessible. Any ideas how to diagnose what went wrong? Thanks!

 

[LBussy]

I suggest you re-run the dependency script and see what happens for you. The issue is PHP is not registered in Apache. Hopefully the script takes care of that. If not I'd need to see your boostrap.log and install.log (may only be one, may be *.txt files) to see where it went sideways.

sudo /home/brewpi/utils/doDepends.sh

 

[AaronP]

Thank you for such a fast reply!
Unfortunately nothing. I re-run the script. It seems to have frozen at

Installing BLEacon support via aioblescan.
Cloning into '/home/pi/aioblescan'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 6, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (6/6), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (6/6), done.
remote: Total 285 (delta 1), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 279

I uninstalled (1) and re-installed BrewPi RMX and the situation remains the same. I am pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that Apache didn't install correctly in my case. Service kept failing to start due to Syntax error on line 143 of Apache2.conf being

# Include module configuration:
IncludeOptional mods-enabled/*.load <--This one

I'm more than happy to submit the logs. How to do that, though? I'm sure they will be quite long.

 

[LBussy]

I'm more than happy to submit the logs. How to do that, though? I'm sure they will be quite long.

I'll PM you an address to which you may send them.

 

[LBussy]

The End of an Era

New Thread is here.

This original thread is 210 pages and with this post, 8,363 posts. The initial post was about how a Homebrewer might reproduce a BrewPi system, which was Open-Source, but for which Elco sold the hardware commercially. Elco no longer sells this version of BrewPi, so the situation has changed.

Elco has taken BrewPi in a new direction with updated and more capable hardware. The original BrewPi (which came to be called “Legacy”) is no longer functional on contemporary hardware/software without substantial work/effort. BrewPi Legacy has been forked, uplifted to current platforms, and enhanced, and this effort is called BrewPi Remix (with Elco’s blessing.) It still runs on an Arduino Uno and is still based on the Raspberry Pi.

The new thread will serve as a “fresh start” in a way to reduce the confusion and lower the barrier to entry for folks just jumping into this fork. The Mega-Thread will always have its place, but now is an archive for the great discussions we have had while still available to be linked, of course, as needed.

The original thread also spawned several other discussions, which should be linked here. These were supplementary to the original BrewPi hardware and, by extension, BrewPi Remix:

• How To: BrewPi LCD Add-On - Started by @day_trippr: We might consider this thread and approach as overcome by events since the BrewPi Remix release. BrewPi Remix supports I2C LCDs on the Arduino Uno as well as the ESP8266. A user may still choose to follow this article; BrewPi still fully supports this approach.
• How To: BrewPi Over Bluetooth – Started by @day_trippr: When day_trippr embarked upon this path, Bluetooth was perhaps the only option available to us for a wireless connection. Now with BrewPi forks (see below) having built-in WiFi available, this may be overcome by events but is still a viable alternative if desired. I have also posted an article consolidating and refining the process.
• Wireless Brewpi Via WiFi – Started by @thekraken: As soon as cheap, plentiful controllers with WiFi became available, this update was inevitable. The linked thread approaches this using an ESP8266 controller as a wireless bridge to the Arduino. New installations may benefit from the pure ESP8266 system documented in the thread from @Thorrak as discussed below.

BrewPi also spawned several other products which are rightfully forks as well, but are substantial products in their own right:

• Fermentrack: Fermentation monitoring & BrewPi-www Replacement for Raspberry Pi – Started by @Thorrak: Fermentrack is an alternative to the legacy BrewPi web interface used in BrewPi Remix. It is a different interface but is compatible with Arduino-based controllers using the legacy BrewPi and BrewPi Remix firmware as well as ESP-based controllers. It adds new features and is a separate project from BrewPi and BrewPi Remix.
• BrewPi@ESP8266, no need of RPI and Arduino (aka BrewPiLess) – Started by @pocketmon: This project is an off-shoot of the ESP8266 firmware, incorporating the web, controller, and scripts into a single controller firmware intended to run on the ESP8266.
• Native Python BrewPi controller (aka Fuscus) – Started by @ame: This project is the opposite of BrewPiLess in some respects, moving the web, controller, and script into a single Python package intended to run on the Raspberry Pi.
• Native ESP8266 BrewPi Firmware - WiFi BrewPi, no Arduino needed! - Started by @Thorrak: The ESP8266 project is a fork of the original BrewPI firmware to run on an ESP8266 instead of an Arduino. It has been additionally uplifted to leverage the ESP8266’s built-in WiFi capabilities. This ESP8266 firmware project fully supports and is supported by the BrewPi Remix web interface.

I did not suggest making this change lightly, and I did not suggest it without consulting several key community members and (obviously) Homebrew Talk staff who have assisted in this transition. Some of you may feel invested in the old thread and may not appreciate this move. To you, I say: I appreciate everyone’s support in helping clean this up for the folks who will need help. We are taking this path for the new folks; I am sure the rest of us can adapt.

New Thread is here.