Keg Cop: Keg Monitoring and Control

[LBussy]

Might be as simple as making any negative numbers go to zero

The initial fix is always easy. The challenge is to get everything else to work again with updated core libs.

 

[Lalo_uy]

It gets harder in Arduino world, where a new version of a lib may change the API and the IDE push you to update.

 

[Lalo_uy]

it's a way to flash without brewflasher?
Try to follow the instruccions for Linux install and stumble to:

git clone [email protected]:thorrak/brewflasher.git
Cloning into 'brewflasher'...
[email protected]: Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.


Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

Dowloaded 3 files :
lolin_d32_firmware.bin
lolin_d32_littlefs.bin
lolin_d32_partitions.bin

For using esptool witch order or offsets of each one?

Thanks in advance.

 

[LBussy]

Calling @Thorrak .. what did you change?

 

[Thorrak]

Nothing that I'm aware of - but I don't typically use/test on Linux GUIs.

Try using BrewFlasher Command Line Edition: https://github.com/thorrak/brewflasher_cli

 

[LBussy]

[email protected]: Permission denied (publickey).

Where did you see those instructions?

The [email protected] is forcing you to authenticate as the upstream "git" user, which is wrong. it should be:

git clone https://github.com/thorrak/brewflasher.git

 

[Lalo_uy]

Where did you see those instructions?

The [email protected] is forcing you to authenticate as the upstream "git" user, which is wrong. it should be:

git clone https://github.com/thorrak/brewflasher.git

Brewflasher README.md

Running from python source on Linux Section​

Will try cli version

 

[LBussy]

Ah that's @Thorrak's fault then.

You might try the command I shared.

 

[Thorrak]

Ah that's @Thorrak's fault then.

You might try the command I shared.

Eeeehhhh, it wasn't entirely my fault...

The [email protected] is forcing you to authenticate as the upstream "git" user, which is wrong. it should be:

git clone https://github.com/thorrak/brewflasher.git

Regardless, updated the readme. Still untested, but hopefully better!

 

[Lalo_uy]

Ok, finally got brewflasher running
the pip command lasted overnight to complete.

to run : python3 Main.py and have a happy flashing

Tnx for the help

 

[Merkur]

Hi Lee and all. I have a home bar & brewery and 7 beers on tap (six on a tower and an Angram English hand-pull. The beers are all in two Komos Kegerators and they work well. I currently do an 'inventory check' about once/month by pulling the kegs out and weighing them. I know the empty weight of each keg and by entering the current weight into an Excel spreadsheet it calculates how much beer is left and the %age full.

Over the years I have built six Flite sensor lids and ESP32 controllers but found that the readings were unreliable and the lids leaked. I also started looking at building my own Plaato keg scales. I have a Taplist hosted on TapItGood which has been reliable and gives me a good looking display on the screen behind the bar.

Should I look at Keg Cop for keg level monitoring? I am up for another project. It seems a lot of work, putting the flowmeters in line with the beer, taps and a potential infection problem. What are the users finding? Is it worth it? I am not interested in controlling the kegerators using keg cop which I know is a possibility.

Paul

 

[LBussy]

I think weight is a more precise and more passive approach. Flow meters provide a reasonable per pour data point. Your comments are accurate, a guy just has to make a decision for himself.

 

[day_trippr]

Is Plaato even a viable option these days? I thought they dumped the HB market some time ago and the software was going away as well.

Weight should have the potential for greater accuracy as there's no exposure to over/under registered pours (or even "ghost pours"). That said, I've been running a half dozen high quality (SF800) flow meters since 2014 and my kegs invariably kick within +/- one pour of empty. Also, for the record, in 20+ years I've never had an evident infection of any kind, which should belie the notion of flow meters = infection vector.

Cheers!

 

[DuncB]

I with the help of the thread have Rpints running on 8 kegs, not had an infection problem. Pretty accurate in my setting, My 8 kegs are jammed into my keg fridge so no way that scales would work for me.
Unless I had the whole keg fridge being weighed, there is a way to do this with Wii Scales, but you'd need a tag or trigger for whatever tap was being used to then subtract from the keg.
I use the cheap arduino flowmeters. There are some more expensive ultrasonic flowmeters available now which theoretically are more aseptic.
Have a look at the gravitymon.com website @mper has a keg weighing project as well.
I have just built and am using the pressuremon measuring system which is useful.
I haven't yet implemented the flow meters on my beer engines.

 

[Merkur]

Is Plaato even a viable option these days? I thought they dumped the HB market some time ago and the software was going away as well.

Weight should have the potential for greater accuracy as there's no exposure to over/under registered pours (or even "ghost pours"). That said, I've been running a half dozen high quality (SF800) flow meters since 2014 and my kegs invariably kick within +/- one pour of empty. Also, for the record, in 20+ years I've never had an evident infection of any kind, which should belie the notion of flow meters = infection vector.

Cheers!

Regarding the SF-800 type flow meters, most of the ones I have seen have a low end flow range of .5 or 1Liter/minute. A lot of my pours are a 3 or 4oz sample for a flight of beers. This translates to around 0.11L/minute. Are their versions of the flow meter that work with that low a flow, or do the regular ones work, but not within their specifications? What are the 'High Quality' meters?

Paul