Yep, I remember the old days having to synchronize my Timex watch with the time clock at work.
Now I wear an Apple watch and have an iPhone and they are never more than 5 seconds off from the time clock.
Kegland Rapt Pill floating hydrometer temperature monitor
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Now I wear an Apple watch and have an iPhone and they are never more than 5 seconds off from the time clock.
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Ye
Didn't matter though, we just argued whether that made any sense since others were using the banks time on their sign or from the phone number you could call.
Besides, in elementary school, the school bell ruled. Didn't matter what the real time was.
Yeah, I thought I was so so superior back in 3rd grade (mid '60's) syncing my watch via the shortwave radio to the time signal in Colorado.
Didn't matter though, we just argued whether that made any sense since others were using the banks time on their sign or from the phone number you could call.
Besides, in elementary school, the school bell ruled. Didn't matter what the real time was.
beren
Well-Known Member
Funnily enough, they still read different depending on the source. Car sync with cell network and can be off compared to my phone.
Dru1989
Member
Recently decided to give Kegland products a try. I purchased a Rapt Pill from a vendor in Canada for $60 US Dollars shipped to my door in the US. Since having the unit, I have had nothing but problems. First issue the pill would not reliably wake up when moved from the horizontal position. After using a trick previously posted about removing the battery and bending the contact clips out for a better connection, it was still not waking up reliably. I un-register the Pill, re-registered it and charge for another 24 hour, my initial charge was 36 hours. Things start to look promising from there. The Pill was waking up! I promptly calibrated it water let it go for 12 hours and was ready for a real world test. I dropped it in my fermenter, it sent 10 data point over 8.5 hours even though it was set to transmit every 30 minutes. Then it stopped transmitting. While it was transmitting, temperature and gravity were spot on. I have a Spike CF10 with full temp control. 2 Weeks later I fished it out the fermenter and again began the process of un-registering, re-registering, calibrating and getting ready for my next brew. This time a little bit better success. I managed to get 44 readings over 18 hours before it quit transmitting again. At this point I was ready to write off the Pill, after all it was only 60 bucks. But, I was persistent, and this time made several dry runs, slowing altering the angle over 12 and 24 hour time frames, it worked great outside the fermenter. I re-calibrated one final time, got 58 data points with a 1.0 or 0.99 gravity for each reading and a constant temperature. I thought for sure I would have success. Dropped the Pill in my next batch and it was reading the temperature accurately 85 times until, you guessed it the unit stop transmitting. Not only that but over the course of those 3 days, the gravity did not start reporting until a day and a half into the ferment. But there was yet another problem, my gravity was below 1.0 and was increasing see chart below, it was turning from beer back to wort. My measured gravity with my hydrometer was 1.070. I have a Asus Zen Wifi ET8 Mesh system in my house, the fermenter is less than 10 feet from my node, a wall (drywall) does separate them. All my devices fly on this higher end Mesh system, unfortunately the Rapt Pill can't reliable send a signal. Kee at Kegland had me sold, but I think I should have waited for the second generation of this product. Currently dealing with customer service in Australia, but none of the suggests are working.
Dru1989
Member
Here is the latest response from Kegland on my issues (I've asked for a replacement), not real confident this will get resolved at this point.
| 9:46 PM (8 minutes ago) | |||
|
Hi Dru,
With active fermentation you will see bubbles, krausen and active fermentation play with the results. The PILL should be used as an identifier for fermentation coming near to an end. I would still for accuracy want to do a hydrometer test if i'm going to be serving this to people so they know the ABV%
As the liquid gets colder, the density would increase making it thicker. That could then absorb more CO2 into solution with little bubbles pushing it higher. Many things can come into play that we simply need to think of lots of possibilities to ascertain some reasoning that makes sense.
Kind Regards,
The KegLand Team (Australia)
410 Princes Highway
Noble Park
VIC 3174
www.KegLand.com.au
+61390187935
Sign up to our Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/kegland.com.au/
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/kegland
The device isn't perfect but hopefully with some future firmware updates we will get there. What I've learned/go by for my 3 pill brews.
1. Leave the battery out of the device when not in use. Put the battery in before you put the pill in sanitizer. I charge the battery with an external charger which makes the battery reading in the pill not work. I am guessing that the pill sets the percentage only when the battery is charged in the pill.
2. Your fermenter needs to be in a relatively close distance to your router. I brew in a keg and I found it really cuts down on the range. I either put the keg in the same room or adjacent room to where my router is.
3. The pill status/dashboard is buggy and it's my least favorite part of the device. It does not always show all 3 data points (battery, gravity, temp), and when you move the sliders, the graph all the sudden gets compressed and looks terrible and doesn't work. KegLand, please fix this.
4. Inconsistent data points. I began nudging my fermenter/keg as I think this makes the pill think something may have changed, making it provide a data update.
5. I don't rely on the gravity readings from the device, I only want to know when gravity stops changing.
Even with the negatives, it still lets me know when fermentation is done so I can move on to dry hopping/carbing so I am happy with the purchase.
1. Leave the battery out of the device when not in use. Put the battery in before you put the pill in sanitizer. I charge the battery with an external charger which makes the battery reading in the pill not work. I am guessing that the pill sets the percentage only when the battery is charged in the pill.
2. Your fermenter needs to be in a relatively close distance to your router. I brew in a keg and I found it really cuts down on the range. I either put the keg in the same room or adjacent room to where my router is.
3. The pill status/dashboard is buggy and it's my least favorite part of the device. It does not always show all 3 data points (battery, gravity, temp), and when you move the sliders, the graph all the sudden gets compressed and looks terrible and doesn't work. KegLand, please fix this.
4. Inconsistent data points. I began nudging my fermenter/keg as I think this makes the pill think something may have changed, making it provide a data update.
5. I don't rely on the gravity readings from the device, I only want to know when gravity stops changing.
Even with the negatives, it still lets me know when fermentation is done so I can move on to dry hopping/carbing so I am happy with the purchase.
Dru1989
Member
It's just not worth the hassle, my Tilt worked as advertised out of the package. Did I have to build a Pi Repeater, Yes, but they told me range was an issue from the start, so I was well prepared for what was in store. I see people raving about the Rapt Pill all over the internet, just look at YouTube. I can't believe I got the only faulty unit. Most of these products I buy just for the experimental fun of it, but quite frankly this device isn't ready for prime time. I will absolutely make great beer without this device, was just hoping this would provide an easy button for gravity and temp without manually doing it.
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@Dru1989
I have had the rapt pill for quite a few months and have had no real issues. Though I will admit that their cloud software that can be dodgy for starting and stopping profiles. Seems like after making a profile change it's best to log out of the portal and then log back in. But certainly not unlike some of the dodgy things experienced with other devices connected to a raspberry Pi.
So while you can't, I can believe that your issues are just a one off thing. Maybe due to you getting a bad unit or a simple and as of yet unknown quirk in something with your use of it.
I have had the rapt pill for quite a few months and have had no real issues. Though I will admit that their cloud software that can be dodgy for starting and stopping profiles. Seems like after making a profile change it's best to log out of the portal and then log back in. But certainly not unlike some of the dodgy things experienced with other devices connected to a raspberry Pi.
So while you can't, I can believe that your issues are just a one off thing. Maybe due to you getting a bad unit or a simple and as of yet unknown quirk in something with your use of it.
Dru1989
Member
I'm chalking this up to a bad unit, hopefully I can get a replacement from Kegland
Per the FB group SS fermenters are somewhat common. Depending on how far the fermenter is from the router you may need an extender though.
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There are others previously in this thread that answered the question you ask. But to do some experimenting just for me, I put my Rapt Pill in a heavy stainless steel stock pot full of water. It's sitting in another room from my wifi endpoint. So is one interior wall and probably about 20 feet between them. This is it's dbm reading....
Obviously this is wifi. But they give you the option of BlueTooth also. However I have that turned off on the pill and didn't wish to open it to turn it on and establish the BT pairing. BT won't have as good a range though.
I think the Bluetooth only for pairing between other Rapt devices such as the Pill to a Rapt temperature controller. My understanding is you would still need WiFi turned on on one of the devices (temp controller) to transmit data to the Rapt cloud.
From Rapt user's group: "If you have a Rapt Fermentation Chamber or Temperature Controller as well as a Rapt Pill, you can now configure your pill to transmit telemetry via Bluetooth and the other "bridging" device will relay the data to the Rapt Cloud."
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I don't know that it changes power for transmission. Though if the signal strength gets too low, then it might have to re-transmit some packets. Or it might wear itself out never connecting depending on what it's failure modes tell it do.
The frequency you set it up for transmitting definitely has an effect on battery. Before I actually used it in the fermenter, I had it at it's default setting of 1 hour. And it is supposed to last five years on one charge at that frequency.
Changing it to give a reading every 15 minutes, it's battery went from 98% to 79% in just over 21 days.
As far as headspace, the thing only has about a 1/2 to 3/4" exposed above the surface when floating in water. And it is about a 30 - 45° angle just guesstimating. Probably needs about 5 inches to float it without touching the bottom.
On the portal, they give access to the API's and such. I haven't programmed in quite a while, but there seems to be enough there to let one program their own custom interface for monitoring. But whether those API's are only for use through the cloud portal, I don't know.
I moved the pot to the other side of the room. It's still one interior wall away but twice as far at about 40 - 45 feet away. I've only gotten one report since moving it about an hour ago and the dbm's are at a high noise level. So it's missed at least two reports since the last good one in that location.
With the plastic fermenter I use, I kept it two interior walls away probably about 50 - 55 feet distance from the wifi AP. One wall with a lot of storage cabinets full of stuff. And had good enough signal strength never missing a report that I'm aware of. But I don't remember ever checking to see what the dbm's were in that location.
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Well as I said it's only got about a 1/2 to 3/4" sticking up above the water now. Even in high gravity beer, I don't think that's going to be much more. Just a different angle it sits at in the beer. So not much headspace needed. Bumping up against and getting hung up on a floating dip tube might be an issue though.
Can't help you with how much pressure it can stand. But there are two o-ring seals on it. So probably it will take some pressure and IIRC, Kegland has pressure fermenters that it sells as well as this. However I'd be concerned that different pressures will make it float differently giving different readings. But maybe the pressure differential isn't that great and for just relative information, probably still useful. And, one can easily calibrate it in a vessel pressurized to whatever the normal PSI is for your ferments prior to using.
I'm just finding out that the cloud portal for the thing has been going up and down today. Or maybe I need to check on my own wifi, though everything else seems normal. But with it going up and down, my experimenting with reception today might be useless.
However I did just get a hit with it in the same place I use my plastic fermenters. And that's impressive to me for it being in a heavy stainless steel stock pot with the lid on. But it is a higher noise level yet......
Can't help you with how much pressure it can stand. But there are two o-ring seals on it. So probably it will take some pressure and IIRC, Kegland has pressure fermenters that it sells as well as this. However I'd be concerned that different pressures will make it float differently giving different readings. But maybe the pressure differential isn't that great and for just relative information, probably still useful. And, one can easily calibrate it in a vessel pressurized to whatever the normal PSI is for your ferments prior to using.
I'm just finding out that the cloud portal for the thing has been going up and down today. Or maybe I need to check on my own wifi, though everything else seems normal. But with it going up and down, my experimenting with reception today might be useless.
However I did just get a hit with it in the same place I use my plastic fermenters. And that's impressive to me for it being in a heavy stainless steel stock pot with the lid on. But it is a higher noise level yet......
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There are reports of some folks successfully fermenting under pressure with a Pill. Other reports of some having issues. I guess YMMV.
Also, as mentioned a few posts ago Rapt team says connection issues with anything approaching -75dbm so I would expect some issues at -87dbm.
I'm a big fan of the iSpindel but because I had one that didn't work properly (charging problems due to the TP4056 that failed) I decided to replace it with the RAPT PILL.
I did not encountered any hardware problems with the PILL like mentioned here but I did a firmware update before I used it, maybe that solved some of those problems.
My first impression was not so good but they were more related to the RAPT Cloud app, I was missing some of the information from the RAPT PILL (like angle, battery voltage,... ) and find the graphics a bit poor.
I also found out that the temperature goes relative high during the charge, but I don't know if this has an impact on the gravity measurements.
Probably it is better to let it cool down first before calibrating it.
I'm also a Brewfather user and I found the information that is send to BF from the RAPT Cloud also very basic, especially if you use the Brewfather Power-up Methode.
Luckily there is a way to simulate the PILL like an iSpindel so you get more information in Brewfather. For those who want to do the same this is what I used as payload in the RAPT Cloud Web Hooks using the Custom Webhook methode:
{
"name" : "@device_name[SG]",
"temperature": @temperature,
"temp_units": "C",
"gravity": @Gravity,
"battery": @battery,
"RSSI": @rssi,
"gravity-unit": "G"
}
You can find more info in this youtube video that helped me configuring this.
Maybe the 'gravity-unit' is not required because I have added [SG] to the name?
I hope that they add some other parameters in the future firmware release because there are more (like angle) available when you connect to the Pill Portal on the Diagnostics page.
I did not encountered any hardware problems with the PILL like mentioned here but I did a firmware update before I used it, maybe that solved some of those problems.
My first impression was not so good but they were more related to the RAPT Cloud app, I was missing some of the information from the RAPT PILL (like angle, battery voltage,... ) and find the graphics a bit poor.
I also found out that the temperature goes relative high during the charge, but I don't know if this has an impact on the gravity measurements.
Probably it is better to let it cool down first before calibrating it.
I'm also a Brewfather user and I found the information that is send to BF from the RAPT Cloud also very basic, especially if you use the Brewfather Power-up Methode.
Luckily there is a way to simulate the PILL like an iSpindel so you get more information in Brewfather. For those who want to do the same this is what I used as payload in the RAPT Cloud Web Hooks using the Custom Webhook methode:
{
"name" : "@device_name[SG]",
"temperature": @temperature,
"temp_units": "C",
"gravity": @Gravity,
"battery": @battery,
"RSSI": @rssi,
"gravity-unit": "G"
}
You can find more info in this youtube video that helped me configuring this.
Maybe the 'gravity-unit' is not required because I have added [SG] to the name?
I hope that they add some other parameters in the future firmware release because there are more (like angle) available when you connect to the Pill Portal on the Diagnostics page.
My pill just died on me after only a few months. It never read battery level correctly and recently stopped communicating my fermentation progress. I tried giving the battery a fresh charge but now only the red LED lights up and I have 0 connectivity. It never had contact with water, was never dropped, just died on its own. I emailed kegland support and am hoping for the best.
I am now looking into buying a DIY iSpindel kit for a little fun project, and if something breaks I can always replace a component, whereas with the pill, its bricked when it dies.
I am now looking into buying a DIY iSpindel kit for a little fun project, and if something breaks I can always replace a component, whereas with the pill, its bricked when it dies.
Although a little less fun, you can buy them ready to use, built and tested by @cayde1001 for $50, mailed to you.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/ispindel.688539/
He just pinged me, thanks!
Did you try to replace the battery?
I had another battery of the same type that also does not fire it up.
If I recall correctly, you can connect to the pill via WiFi without a battery when powered by USB-C, which gets you into config mode. I cannot get anything but a solid red light.
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Green light of the Pill is supposed to let you know when it's portal is open and/or sending data. It only stays on for a short time unless you are connected to the captive portal before it goes out.
Red light just lets you know it's charging and supposedly goes out when finished, though last time I charged it showed 100% for a long while and the red LED never went out.
Have you tried both the cloud app on the web and logging into the captive portal directly from your phone soon after you connect the USB cable?
I haven't had any real issues with mine, except that their cloud App still needs some work. It sometimes hangs and never finishes loading to the browser properly on my PC or Phone. But that's not all the time, more often than not it works for me.
I noticed that you can't get these any longer from AliExpress vendors. Not sure what's up with that.
Well that stinks. I have a Pill too that has been working ok so far. My only complaint with it is occasionally it fails to transmit back to the cloud, despite the fact that my fermenter is sitting literally 16 inches away from my router. This happens when fermenting in a plastic fermenter or in a corny keg.
Mine worked awesome until recently..I loved it just to know when fermentation was complete without taking samples.
My iSpindel kit is on the way!
My iSpindel kit is on the way!
Here is the latest response from Kegland on my issues (I've asked for a replacement), not real confident this will get resolved at this point.
The KegLand Team <[email protected]>
9:46 PM (8 minutes ago)
to me
Hi Dru,
With active fermentation you will see bubbles, krausen and active fermentation play with the results. The PILL should be used as an identifier for fermentation coming near to an end. I would still for accuracy want to do a hydrometer test if i'm going to be serving this to people so they know the ABV%
As the liquid gets colder, the density would increase making it thicker. That could then absorb more CO2 into solution with little bubbles pushing it higher. Many things can come into play that we simply need to think of lots of possibilities to ascertain some reasoning that makes sense.
Kind Regards,
The KegLand Team (Australia)
410 Princes Highway
Noble Park
VIC 3174
www.KegLand.com.au
+61390187935
Sign up to our Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/kegland.com.au/
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/kegland
Hello Dru. I just had a look at your signal strength and it frequently drops below -50dB which is really bad to be honest.
WIFI SIGNAL
As you can imagine stainless steel tanks are difficult to get a good signal out of. For instance large mobile phone manufactures spend many millions of dollars on making efficient and optimized mobile phone antennas and I would bet that if you also put the latest iphone into your spike fermenter(in a waterproof case) you will also get poor wifi signal too. With that said if you have a wifi access point right near the fermenter this seems to work with many other customers. You should try and aim for a signal strength of -40dB or better if possible.
BLUETOOTH
For people in your shoes we have a lot of great success with customers using the pill in Bluetooth mode and using one of our other RAPT devices to relay information to the web. For instance our RAPT Temperature Controller box can do this and so can our RAPT Fermentation Chamber. From our experience Bluetooth does work better with these stainless steel tanks and we get more reliable connection. The Bluetooth mode also allows you to unlock several other features such as:
1. You can use the pill as the control temperature device. For instance you can use the RAPT temperature controller to turn on and off glycol to your tanks or turn on and off heating device based on the pill temperature inside the tank.
2. You can also get far more frequent data transmissions as the Bluetooth is much lower power consumption.
3. On Monday we are releasing new firmware and software on the web portal that will allow us to use more complex profile management so if you are using a RAPT temperature controller or RAPT fermentation chamber you can actually set the gravity required to move to the next step in the profile. For instance you can automatically do a diacetyl rest once the gravity reaches SG 1.020 for instance. This level of automation is very useful but not available with wifi alone.
BATTERY TERMINALS
With respect to your signal dropping out it's also HIGHLY LIKELY that you have bad connection with the PCB and the actual battery itself. Your battery seems to be fully charged which is great. With that said the actual wire terminals are probably not pushing against the battery hard enough. Please have a look at image attached. Please bend the terminals "B" closer toward the battery as shown. It took us some time to find this issue but we have found the that battery cradle had very tight clips in position "A" as shown. The tight clips grab onto the battery too hard and if the battery is pushed toward the negative or positive terminal too hard the friction of the clips held the battery away from one of the two ends and thus caused a poor and unreliable circuit. With that said bending the terminals closer to the battery will fix this. You should also know in the later editions of the Pill we have chosen a different battery cradle manufacturer but my guess is you have one of the original pill hydrometers.
These steps are mentioned in our guide here but for you particularly Dru I would start with Battery Terminals as mentioned above:
https://www.kegland.com.au/media/pd...rometer and Thermometer Quick Start Guide.pdf
HIGHER GRAVITY READINGS AT THE START OF FERMENTATION
I should also say that it's quite normal during high krausen for the gravity to increase. We have noticed that when the fermentation is quite active bubbles stick to the outside of the hydrometer and cause it to float a little higher and thus give higher gravity reading. This is exactly what happens with conventional hydrometers too. As you would know with a conventional hydrometer to overcome this issue you would "spin" the hydrometer to shake off the bubbles. With these types of floating hydrometers you cant spin but it's pretty easy to shake the fermenter and this works quite well. Shaking your fermenter also has the secondary benefit of washing the wort over the top of the pill and this washes off dried up hops and krausen from the pill. So I highly recommend giving the fermenter a shake every now and then and this also fixes this issue. With that said if you do not shake the fermenter generally after high fermentation this problem solves itself anyway and ultimately the more important gravity readings are the ones at the end of the fermentation process.
Attachments
I am in conversation with Darin with Kegland tonight as well on my broken pill. We came to the conclusion it's a board issue and he said to go through the retailer, which I just told him is Kegland's AliExpress store. Waiting on a response
hey hotbeer.
We are doing quite a lot of updates on the RAPT platform and to ensure that feature requests are getting evaluated please log feature requests or bugs here:
Default · Boards · Rapt.Io / Rapt.Io · GitLab
We are doing a lot of firmware and software development at the moment. I will openly admit that the RAPT platform is still quite young (2 years old) and contains some bugs but with that said with the various new products that are getting added to the range the whole ecosystem is developing quite fast and we are committed to making this a good experience for you guys but as we add more products to the ecosystem we also need to continue to keep upgrading firmware on the devices and also software on the web platform. For instance we also have a digital spunding valve and digital regulator that are getting added soon.
With respect to starting and stopping profiles I also want to say it's important that you only start the profile once the pill is sitting still in the start of the fermentation. Failure to do so will result in a SG that is not correct and thus the ABV calculator will not work correctly. If you accidentally do this that is still ok as you can override the SG figure but it's just easier to drop the Pill in first, wait for it to stop bobbing up and down and then start the profile. This is a common issue that we have seen.
This is great and this is one of the major things that will improve reliability. I should also say stronger signal strength also improves battery life as the radio can turn on for a shorter period if less packets are lost so you will notice your battery life will also be better than some other customers too.
Can you please do us all a favor and post the link to the cheap wifi extender.
Great. Thanks for that. This really is quite cheap so thanks for posting this link I am sure other customers will find this handy.
kbaggen
Well-Known Member
Hi there, I guess it a good place to post about this new project:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...datalogger-and-temperature-controller.725163/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...datalogger-and-temperature-controller.725163/
I borrowed a Rapt Pill from a friend so I can test it out in my brewery before buying one. However, when I try to add it to my account, it tells me that I can't add it because it's been added before. I already "cleared registration" but the error remains. Is there any way to fix this other than waiting for my friend to remove it from his account?
(I contacted keg land support, but figured maybe someone here would know.)
(I contacted keg land support, but figured maybe someone here would know.)
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I went there and didn't quite see a way to make feature requests and bug reports. I have one of each to report!
I was able to see what's currently being worked on.
Click "List" in the left pane if in a browser on a computer. For mobile tap the icon in the upper left and tap List.
Has anyone using a Rapt Pill tried fermenting in a corny keg with a Pill and a floating dip tube both at the same time? Just curious if the pill will get hung up under the floating dip tube.
FWIW, I now have fermented several beers while using my Pill and have no real complaints other than it occasionally not updating to the portal. These misses generally coincide with bad wifi readings. I've noticed it's quite good on sunny, low humidity days, but much worse when it's overcast and raining.
Current beer fermenting...
FWIW, I now have fermented several beers while using my Pill and have no real complaints other than it occasionally not updating to the portal. These misses generally coincide with bad wifi readings. I've noticed it's quite good on sunny, low humidity days, but much worse when it's overcast and raining.
Current beer fermenting...
How strong of a WIFI signal do you expect from a Faraday Cage?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage
