While I wait for my parts to arrive, I have a few basic questions for you guys if you don't mind.
1. I ferment in glass carboys and do 10 gallon batches. I know two carboys will fit in the refrigerator I plan to use, but obviously I will only be able to put the temp probe in one of these. Surely regulating the temperature based on one carboy will be adequate enough for the 2nd carboy sitting beside it correct?
2. I usually use blowoff tubes...how can I get the temp probe and the blowoff tube in the carboy at the same time? I almost always have krausen pushing through the tubes.
3. After the bulk of fermentation is complete, say after a week to 10 days, do you guys pull the fermenters out of the fridge and let them do their thing at room temp or do you keep them in the fridge? That is one thing I've noticed with my current "swamp cooler" method, is that it almost always takes 3 weeks, sometimes 4 to reach my final gravity. I'm hoping proper fermentation control speeds that up.
I ferment in glass, always run blow-offs during the throes of early primary, and control the fermentation fridge via a probe strapped to the side of the carboy with a piece of thick foam over it. There have been convincing accounts that a probe thus attached will track within a degree of a probe in a thermowell.
Cheers!
So after slogging through the manual BrewPi installation I have RaspberryPints and BrewPi peacefully coexisting together. The only conflict I found along the way was both use the default index.php for their web pages, so I changed the one for BrewPi to brewpi.php. Otherwise, even though I could spend an entire day revising their instructions to harden them up, I've dealt with worse.
Device configuration was a bit interesting. The BrewPi site shows devices with "Device type" fields with something other than "None", unlike all of my devices. It's surprising the ds18b20s show up as "None" as they actually have device type codes embedded, but there's no way that BrewPi could identify the relay channels (just a GPIO pin sinking current through an opto-isolator that switches a transistor that energizes a relay coil - there isn't anything that's going to answer the question "What are you?"). Which makes me wonder where the "Temp Sensor", "Switch Sensor" and "Switch Actuator" values shown on their web site images for the device configuration are coming from.
Anyway, I figured out what was hooked where and assigned the sensors and relays in a generic manner. Still, at the start I had the two relay circuits set to non-inverted and then sat there like an idiot wondering why the LEDs on the relay card for both the cool and heat circuits were on simultaneously. Duh.
So with this running on my office desk I'm most likely torturing the control algorithms, as the relays obviously aren't hooked to anything and the two probes are laying on my desk. But I've been having fun scrambling BrewPi's senses playing with the temperature probes and changing the temperature goal. I have a feeling I'm going to be looking for a "Global Reset" function to make the poor thing unlearn whatever it thinks it's learning
Cheers!
[edit: it appears the one could indeed get BrewPi to run on an AlaMode without much issue as it appears the program supports all kinds of serial links. That said, if the intent of having an AlaMode is to manage the flow sensors for R'Pints V2 then BrewPi has to be run on its own Uno anyway.]
As BrewerJack mentioned, if you use carboys you really should get some carboy caps that have thermowells.
One of the main benefits of this setup is its precision, which you throw out the window by measuring through the fermenter, and as he said your going to experience some pretty bad under and over swing on your temp settings.
Leaving out the accounts of many folks who have conducted experiments comparing chamber regulation performance using thermowells vs externally applied and thermally isolated probes - and just going by my own experience over the years - I see no compelling need for thermowells. Once I switch over my fermentation fridge from a Love TSS2 to BrewPi I may feel differently...
Cheers!
Where did you get that little break out board for your temp probes? I need that!
Those are home-brewed One-Wire "bridge" cards. I made them out of 100mil perf board, glued the through-pin header strips down, added the 4.7K pull-up resistor, then wired them all up in the back. There's one for the 'Pi that can handle the maximum of five DS18B20 sensors and another bridge for the Uno that can handle four sensors. They take about 20 minutes to make.
Excuse the crappy extreme-closeup shots
Cheers!
Day_trippr--why a 4 line breakout, using pullup 4.7K to 3.3v for the DS18b20? Most wiring diags I've found for multiple DS18B20 sensors use the 4.7K pullup to 5v, which requires only 3 wires going Arduino-to-Sensors.
I was pretty sure it could, turns out they already have a document how to do it(Yes you need a seperate Arduino). Its nice in that respect i guess in that once you have the webserver infrastructure in place, your really only out $20ish for a new arduino and new sensors for each additional chamber.
http://docs.brewpi.com/advanced-setups/multiple-arduinos-single-rpi.html
awesome thread and awesome project
wouldn't it be possible to control two fridges with a single arduino if you use one probe as fridge1 and one probe as fridge2.. and then top outlet for fridge1 and bottom outlet for fridge2?
I don't see why that wouldn't work.. it would just need the code to be rewritten some.. which is probably beyond my skill level unfortunately
oh maybe you don't even need to change the code.. maybe it's just creating a second instance of brewpi (like on the multiple arduino link) and then linking the appropriate devices
that sounds really doable.. or does that confuse the arduino (running two things on the same one?)
Hey guys
Quick ? about the chamber I'm using.
I got this fridge from my sister and brother-in-law
https://www.danby.com/en/US/our_products/refrigeration/dbc120bls
It just has a knob to control the temp. Do I need to bypass the thermostat somehow and make it "always on", so that when brewpi wants to turn it on it immediately comes on? Or if I turn the control knob all the way down to as cold as it will go will it work? for just ale fermentation?? and what about for lager ferm temp and lagering temps?
I just received the fridge and turned it on the coldest setting to see how cold it will get, so I'll check back later this afternoon.
Thanks
Does BrewPi have any mechanism for retaining all of the device settings so they can be reloaded (like, after the 'Pi has been powered off)?
Cheers!
I'm considering using an STC-1000 as a freezstat to interrupt the cooling when the coils start building ice. See any problems with that? (I was reading on the brewpi sight that they might add this functionality in the next rev..)
Yes, it's written to a JSON file.
It really depends how cold it gets, im going to guess it will get down to 40-45F which should be fine for maintaining any ale..
*edit*
The website says 43F...so thats your limit...you can still do lagers easily at that temp.
I'd like to make some longer runs for the temp sensor.
Would this type of wire be correct? 3CA-3 3-conductor cable
fwiw...I've been setting up my 'Pi to be able to eventually send out emails under various alert conditions that will be associated with my keezer temperature logger and BrewPi controlling my fermentation fridge. As part of that I installed an outgoing smtp service that "talks" through gmail.
What about posting a message to twitter instead of emails?
Ugh. No, thank you.
HBT is the closest I get to "social networking"...
Cheers!
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