Replacement or alternate source for BrewTroller with volume sensing

[DaveSeattle]

Of course my BrewTroller controller (DX1) dies right after OSCSYS goes out of business. I managed to snag one of their BX basic controllers from their existing inventory, but it doesn't have the full feature set I want (internet, more outputs). My physical setup requires volume or flow sensing - my HLT is mounted 8 feet off the ground, and I want keep a fully automated system i.e. the system needs to be able to stop sparging when the correct amount of wort is in the kettle, as it did with my old controller. I have a whole system here with valves, pumps, etc., and nothing to drive it! I can control it manually but without the controller to do volume sensing I have no idea how much wort is in my HLT or MLT (at least the kettle has a sight glass...).

Is there any alternative source for the DX1 BrewTrollers? Or is there an alternative that supports volume or flow sensing? I've seen a bunch of posts about flow meters for the BCS and new builds based on the Raspberry Pi and BBB, but none of them seem to be fully functional yet.

I'm up for a modest amount of hardware and software hacking (I can code and solder) but don't have time or desire to debug much, nor much depth of knowledge on the hardware side.

 

[JayElDubya]

I'm also interested. I wonder if we can get the gerber files from the OCSYS fellas and beable to print some boards and assemble some controllers ourselves? If not, they at least have the schematics posted and we *could* work from that. A board layout and housing arrangement would all have to be reengineered though.

Link

I'm not volunteering yet or anything, but with enough interest, one could actually design, print and assemble several boards and take advantage of some bulk pricing.

-Josh

 

[DaveSeattle]

I'm sure they would eventually transfer the files over to you. Jeremiah (the hardware guy) said he'd post all the Eagle files, and they're already posted for the DX1/BX1/EX1 but not the X2 series.

From my perspective the housing is optional. The board layout obviously not . I do have both a DX1 (two, actually) and a BX2 to reference.

I wonder how difficult it would be to port the BT code to a standard Arduino setup. It would be a lot easier to use standard Arduino parts like 5V relays instead of the 12V they're running.

How much do you know about this stuff? I know a ton about embedded software in general but little about Arduino hardware or software and would love a hand getting started. I'm going to help Matt (the software guy) with whatever fixes and features are in the queue as a way to get started, and look to build out some of the features that have been requested. I'm also hoping to build a real GUI so people don't have to hack up .h files anymore.

 

[stainlessbrewer]

They are posting the Eagle files so someone can make more boards. They are still selling stuff off the site for awhile so stock up.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[JayElDubya]

Years ago I used to design and print PCBs, but its been awhile. I'm sure I could get back into it so long as I can find time. If the gerber files are supplied, getting new boards is pretty easy. The relatively tricky part would be to solder all of the surface-mount compnents to the boards. I've only done a little surface-mount soldering but I have a colleague that's pretty good at it and did my last PWM controller. Being that I'm gearing up for an automated brew system myself (and was planning on using the Brewtroller) I could probably be convinced to try and figure this out.

Switching from 12v to 5v would take a little bit of work though and I'm not sure you'd really want to. Most (all?) of the electrically-controlled ball valves, for example, needed more than 5v. 12v also gives you the ability to use bulbs/components from the auto industry if need be. If other voltages are needed, it's pretty trivial to add it via relays which is exactly what the BT devs did with the relay boards. Of course, you could also have triggered relays with 5v signals to control 12v accesories. I'm not sure why the design choice of 12v was made, but I'm sure there was a good reason. It shouldn't be too hard from a software standpoint to switch it to 5v though, I think it would just be hardware changes.

-Josh

 

[DaveSeattle]

The problem with 12v on the BT is the board can't supply enough current to drive much of anything so you wind up needing a relay for everything anyway. And all the Arduino stuff is 5v, or 3.3v.

I'd love to help you out. I'm sure Jeremiah would give you the files since he's getting out of the business. And I can definitely support on the software side. I've looked through the code and there is not too much fancy stuff happening.

 

[JayElDubya]

Okay, well let's get those files and take a look at what that would take. I'll go through the schematics in the mean time to see what may need to be adjusted for 5v conversion and maybe start a BOM for the materials. (Unless the BT devs have that readily available also and would like to share.)

-Josh

 

[heffa35]

Hello

I have made a brew system using brewtroller on an arduino mega. I'm looking into making this a litte more permanent. I was thinking of using DX1 as controller. As I understand this controller is discontinued. I can make my own PCB's and want to look into the schematics and/or eagle files if they are available. Do anyone managed to gather this?

 

[DaveSeattle]

Pop over to the BrewTroller Users Group on Facebook and ask there. There are a couple guys getting the BrewTroller going again, and they'll be shipping new boards soon, but they'll also be able to share the schematics with you if you want to make your own in the meantime. I have some of them but not sure I have the full set so you should ask there. Fair warning, it's a pretty complicated board as homebrew stuff goes.

 

[stainlessbrewer]

New board to replace the DX1 is still weeks away from filling pre-orders. Not much has been done on the software side since the closing of old website and forum. Seems there is no where near the interest or activity as a few years ago. Sad actually.

 

[DaveSeattle]

Actually there's a lot happening on the software side, you just have to check out the develop branch or my personal fork in Github. They are moving to a web setup instead of editing the options in code in the Arduino environment (this was a ton of work, they are actually compiling in the cloud). In my own branch I made a ton of improvements, most notably much improved PID control of pumps for automatic sparge rate control, which are pending testing before integrating. Better support for BIAB and other setups. A bunch of random cool stuff like configuring your own brewery name on the splash screen. We're substantially improving the code quality so it will be easier to add features in the future. Not to knock the original authors, they built a lot of features, but it was over-optimized and not using modern code or test practices and therefore very fragile to work on.

I have no stake in the company, I just like hacking and want to maximize the value of my BT system. Sparge rate control is my killer feature because it's the last thing that I need to do manually. But mostly I just like coding.

 

[stainlessbrewer]

Web setup is a nice change but single vessel support is still basically a hack like before. None of the new software developments have even been mentioned on the website. Hopefully it gains some momentum because the new forum is like a graveyard compared to before and the available components is basically nil after a year. I was left holding the bag mid build and no resolution in sight so moving on.

 

[DaveSeattle]

Check out my fork. Vessels are assigned to roles and the system knows how many there are. I had exactly your problem in mind when writing the code.

I'll mention about the website. I agree it's been dead, but hopefully when the new board actually relaunches it'll get more active. BT is still the best solution for full automation, other than PicoBrew and Brewie, and because it's open source and Arduino you'll never be totally SOL. (BCS can't do volume measurements so it's not truly automatic.) Believe me I'm not married to it and would switch if a better option existed.

If there's something else you want from the BT software, let me know or post it in the Facebook Brewtroller Users Group, which is the most active place at present.

 

[jfenton78]

Daveseattle can you post a link to your fork? I'm having trouble finding it.

 

[DaveSeattle]

https://github.com/dseidman/BrewTroller-Official

Most of my changes are in the branch feature/vessel-refactor, as well as test where I'm implementing test code. Eric has implemented some other test code in the main fork as well, in the feature/eeprom-refactor branch.

Note that my branch is under heavy development and may not even compile at any given time, let alone work. I would love collaborators on this - the codebase needed a lot of work so I probably broke a lot of stuff in the process of cleaning it up.

 

[MrShake]

I'll just drop a quick note, I think Dave has summed it up pretty well. The website has been pretty dead, due 100% to the focus being on getting the boards back into production (which has been a huge uphill battle) and on the work being done on the firmware and update utility!!

I hope we are getting close!!! As well, if your in need of a specific component, reach out, I may be able to source it for you, or may actually have some stock in place that I haven't made avaliable yet.

As well, I'm planning on a better website once we have boards in stock, probably going to divide the store from the community stuff to better handle sales and build the community. The forums had been dead for quite a while before I took over, I hope we can build that back up once we get the buzz going again!!

There is also going to be more communication and content via social media going foward. A Youtube channel is in the works, and we already have more discussions going on on Facebook than ever before!!! Reddit is there as well, and we will become much more active on instagram!!

I know a lot of paitence is required here, but trust me, this thing is moving along, and you will see some exciting things coming soon!! Always feel free to hit me up on Facebook, email, twitter, reddit, or right here!!

 

[mattd2]

I hope we are getting close!!!

I hope you know personally how close you are I understand not wanting to annouce things too early though in case of unforeseeable setbacks that might delay release. Any chance on an update on what has happened since taking over?

As well, if your in need of a specific component, reach out, I may be able to source it for you, or may actually have some stock in place that I haven't made avaliable yet.

As well, I'm planning on a better website once we have boards in stock, probably going to divide the store from the community stuff to better handle sales and build the community. The forums had been dead for quite a while before I took over, I hope we can build that back up once we get the buzz going again!!

There is also going to be more communication and content via social media going foward. A Youtube channel is in the works, and we already have more discussions going on on Facebook than ever before!!! Reddit is there as well, and we will become much more active on instagram!!

I know a lot of paitence is required here, but trust me, this thing is moving along, and you will see some exciting things coming soon!! Always feel free to hit me up on Facebook, email, twitter, reddit, or right here!!

To be honest I am never going to buy a Brewtroller - the only reason is I like the flexibility of a DIY solution and would rather put my time into it rather than my money
But I will most likely be basing the control side of an arduino platform and it may be beneficial to include in the Brewtroller community a DIY section - benefit for Brewtroller is the development of new features by the DIY community which could then be incorporated into the off-the-shelf Brewtroller offering.
Any takers????

 

[DaveSeattle]

Eric can confirm but I think the BT code will just work on suitable Arduino boards, but you'll have to add a ton of input filtering, USB jack, buttons, LEDs, etc. to make it work as well as the BT board. Frankly I think the BT is a pretty good value, other than the fact you can't buy one at present .

For reference, I'm just a guy from the community who's been working on the BT code for fun and to make it work the way I want it to. The codebase is fairly tractable, and is getting better as we work on it, so I'd encourage anyone with dev skills and interest to pitch in. Just let Eric know and he can get you hooked up with the dev community.

 

[MrShake]

I hope you know personally how close you are I understand not wanting to annouce things too early though in case of unforeseeable setbacks that might delay release. Any chance on an update on what has happened since taking over?


To be honest I am never going to buy a Brewtroller - the only reason is I like the flexibility of a DIY solution and would rather put my time into it rather than my money
But I will most likely be basing the control side of an arduino platform and it may be beneficial to include in the Brewtroller community a DIY section - benefit for Brewtroller is the development of new features by the DIY community which could then be incorporated into the off-the-shelf Brewtroller offering.
Any takers????

A DIY section in the community is a great idea!! I'll make sure thats incorperated!!

In terms of an update, I'm going to be releasing a video soon talking about the state of BrewTroller and going over the last years worth of work. I would do that here in its own thread, but I imagine the powers that be would see that as advertising and frown on it!!

Now, the important question is, whats it going to take to get you to change your mind on buying a BT?? oh wait. thats advertising too.. dangit!! Teehee!!

 

[MrShake]

Eric can confirm but I think the BT code will just work on suitable Arduino boards, but you'll have to add a ton of input filtering, USB jack, buttons, LEDs, etc. to make it work as well as the BT board. Frankly I think the BT is a pretty good value, other than the fact you can't buy one at present .

For reference, I'm just a guy from the community who's been working on the BT code for fun and to make it work the way I want it to. The codebase is fairly tractable, and is getting better as we work on it, so I'd encourage anyone with dev skills and interest to pitch in. Just let Eric know and he can get you hooked up with the dev community.

Dave, you are right, the firmware should have no issue compiling onto a stock arduino board, but there would be a TON of extra components for inputs, outputs, ethernet, one wire, etc, etc to make it work. I think some folks have accomplished this, but I think the board itself is (as you said) a good value when you figure in all those extra components.

I'm REALLY hoping soon the lack of avalibility will be a non-issue.

 

[mattd2]

A DIY section in the community is a great idea!! I'll make sure thats incorperated!!

In terms of an update, I'm going to be releasing a video soon talking about the state of BrewTroller and going over the last years worth of work. I would do that here in its own thread, but I imagine the powers that be would see that as advertising and frown on it!!

Now, the important question is, whats it going to take to get you to change your mind on buying a BT?? oh wait. thats advertising too.. dangit!! Teehee!!

Sounds great - I remember the info you guys put up when you first took over the project (or I made up something in my head if that didn't happen...) and it was really good to understand what was going on.

How much is a BT (or will it be when available) - Realistically I would probably want to go with a high spec model in terms of functionality. I still don't know the concept of what I will go for when I start truly automating - but my current thinking is a distrubted network of smaller controllers with a beaglebones black as the HMI... or probably something else completely

 

[mattd2]

Dave, you are right, the firmware should have no issue compiling onto a stock arduino board, but there would be a TON of extra components for inputs, outputs, ethernet, one wire, etc, etc to make it work. I think some folks have accomplished this, but I think the board itself is (as you said) a good value when you figure in all those extra components.

I'm REALLY hoping soon the lack of avalibility will be a non-issue.

Yeah I was following one project trying to move the BT onto a stock Arduino Mega - but as you say it is likely not very cost effective from all the other stuff need for it to function as a BT. My idea was more for any BT (or other Arduino based users) to be able to "ahck" the BT to add functionality, e.g. support for hall effect flowmeters or pH monitoring.

 

[DaveSeattle]

A coworker of mine is working on both, using a base Arduino to feed his BCS. He's going to give me code and schematics once he gets it working.

 

[kickflip_mj]

A coworker of mine is working on both, using a base Arduino to feed his BCS. He's going to give me code and schematics once he gets it working.

Id be interested in this. I like brewtroller, but mine freezes sometimes.

 

[DaveSeattle]

See if you can figure out a pattern so we can fix it in the code.

The pH part is really easy, a lot of those cheap pH meters put off an analog signal that would be very easy to read through the BT's analog pins. I'm not sure what you'd do with it, maybe stop the sparge when the pH exceeded a threshold, or maybe just log it.

 

[MrShake]

Sounds great - I remember the info you guys put up when you first took over the project (or I made up something in my head if that didn't happen...) and it was really good to understand what was going on.

How much is a BT (or will it be when available) - Realistically I would probably want to go with a high spec model in terms of functionality. I still don't know the concept of what I will go for when I start truly automating - but my current thinking is a distrubted network of smaller controllers with a beaglebones black as the HMI... or probably something else completely

The preorders are running 225, which will be very close to the final retail price, and thats for the high spec model.

 

[kickflip_mj]

See if you can figure out a pattern so we can fix it in the code.

The pH part is really easy, a lot of those cheap pH meters put off an analog signal that would be very easy to read through the BT's analog pins. I'm not sure what you'd do with it, maybe stop the sparge when the pH exceeded a threshold, or maybe just log it.

Are you referring to my issue? It seems to freeze when its in basic pid function on my HLT. Its working fine, then I realize somethings wrong, nothing will change, then I have to restart the system.

 

[DaveSeattle]

Are you referring to my issue? It seems to freeze when its in basic pid function on my HLT. Its working fine, then I realize somethings wrong, nothing will change, then I have to restart the system.

Yes, there must be some bug there. Does it happen only when the PID is on full, on partial, off, or in any state? Have you modified the PID tuning or cycle time? Does the display update as the temperature changes or is the display frozen too? What's your hardware profile? Anything funky or special about your system? Does it happen only on one stage (preheat, mash, sparge) or all of them? Have you enabled any non default options related to the HLT? How often/fast does it happen? This info will help me track down the bug.

 

[eric_pwb]

Eric can confirm but I think the BT code will just work on suitable Arduino boards, but you'll have to add a ton of input filtering, USB jack, buttons, LEDs, etc. to make it work as well as the BT board. Frankly I think the BT is a pretty good value, other than the fact you can't buy one at present .

For reference, I'm just a guy from the community who's been working on the BT code for fun and to make it work the way I want it to. The codebase is fairly tractable, and is getting better as we work on it, so I'd encourage anyone with dev skills and interest to pitch in. Just let Eric know and he can get you hooked up with the dev community.

While compiling the code for a stock arduino (mega only) is technically possible, it would likely require some pretty significant code changes, along with the extra hardware you mentioned.

Overall, I think Dave has done a good job summing up the state of the project so far; there are a lot of under-the-hood type changes that we are working on, aimed squarely at improving flexibility and reliability. Along with that, I have migrated the build system entirely away from the arduino IDE, so users never have to touch code to configure their systems, if they don't want to; instead there is an automated firmware installation application and a cloud compiler system, which is currently in a private beta testing stage (Watch for it to be available soon!).

 

[rabeb25]

The problem being, how does one customize the firmware for the system, HERMS loss, vol stuff, etc then?

 

[DaveSeattle]

The problem being, how does one customize the firmware for the system, HERMS loss, vol stuff, etc then?

Do you mean through the web compilation? There will be a web UI to configure the options. We will probably remove some options that few people are using, per the survey, so be sure to respond to the survey if you have options you really care about. We're intending to eventually include most of the options that anybody indicated any interest in or that we want ourselves, but we're trying to make it super solid for the most common ones first, e.g. first-class BIAB support. Power users will still be able to edit the code and compile locally (Mac/Linux strongly recommended), but frankly a lot of the existing options are quite hacky so the code for those will likely be removed at least temporarily. But partial to full automation for RIMS, HERMS, and BIAB configurations is the primary user scenario and is the top priority. We're totally open to feedback on what should be included so please let us know! In fact we're a bit starved for info on what people want from their BT so the more you can tell us, the better! Recognizing that we can't necessarily meet every need right away, since the software dev team is entirely volunteers who just want their BTs to be awesome.

 

[MrShake]

The problem being, how does one customize the firmware for the system, HERMS loss, vol stuff, etc then?

The goal rabeb is to get all the configurable options into the update UP or out of compile time and into a UI somewhere. IF you need more robust hacking on the firmware, we will be releasing a toolchain setup in a virtual box image of some sort to enable that kind of work. Or at least that is the current plan.

 

[mrillies]

Hi Guys,

Sounds like this project is heading in the right direction!

I've got some dev experience and could definitely lend some time to bug hunting and testing. Currently i have a BX2 using Linux btnic/btcgi.

I was pretty close to giving up on this entirely before finding this post. Can i suggest one big sticky or banner on the forum, dated Jan/Feb 2016 with a quick summary saying something like
-----------------------
"This project is in active re-development and, check out (facebook?) for up to date information.
Summary of changes:
-Web config tool
-removal of arduino dependancy
-etc etc
A new release is expected in X months"
-------------------

In terms of goals/requirements i'm interested in
- 2/3 vessel setup
- full auto capability going forward
- Ability to completly setup and run from web interface.
- Basic fermentation control
- Email/SMS/something Error Alerts

Ideally i would have one controller on the brew rig, one in the fermentation cupboard and an Rpi/BBB tying it all together and serving it to a tablet/web

Keep up the good work guys!

Jake

 

[MrShake]

Hi Guys,

Sounds like this project is heading in the right direction!

I've got some dev experience and could definitely lend some time to bug hunting and testing. Currently i have a BX2 using Linux btnic/btcgi.

I was pretty close to giving up on this entirely before finding this post. Can i suggest one big sticky or banner on the forum, dated Jan/Feb 2016 with a quick summary saying something like
-----------------------
"This project is in active re-development and, check out (facebook?) for up to date information.
Summary of changes:
-Web config tool
-removal of arduino dependancy
-etc etc
A new release is expected in X months"
-------------------

In terms of goals/requirements i'm interested in
- 2/3 vessel setup
- full auto capability going forward
- Ability to completly setup and run from web interface.
- Basic fermentation control
- Email/SMS/something Error Alerts

Ideally i would have one controller on the brew rig, one in the fermentation cupboard and an Rpi/BBB tying it all together and serving it to a tablet/web

Keep up the good work guys!

Jake

Thats a good idea!! I'll get a sticky up in the forum today!! IF you want to throw your hat into the development right, send me a PM here, or an email through the website and I'll get you plugged into the group of devs we have poking at bugs.