TiltBridge - Tilt-to-WiFi Device for Tilt Hydrometer

[Thorrak]

I’d love to know how you go with this and how easy would it be to load the tilt bright program and to get it to run
(I’m a bit useless at setting up some of these things. If it’s plug and play then I might have some success of doing it)

Hey there!

Just to be clear - is your question how to build a TiltBridge more generically, or is it specifically how to build one using the ESP32-S3 that mijaba is talking about?

 

[UncleD]

HBT community, sorry for not being around as much! Family, work, and life has taken away from my time for supporting some of these projects. For anyone who has tried to create an account with the web app, I apologize the email verifications weren't configured. I am working on setting them up so it will be working again. It also sounds like @Thorrak is already working on another cloud solution. I'll be reaching out to him separately to help where he needs. I'll update this thread as soon as the web app is working properly. All others that already had a tiltbridge logging to the cloud and a use set up, that functionality should not have stopped. I can confirm that there are many tiltbridges actively logging data as recent as yesterday.

 

[UncleD]

I have confirmed that verification emails are now operating as designed. For anyone who has been trying to create an account, this should now be functional.

 

[bloombrews]

@Thorrak
My ESP32 board with mini onboard screen just crapped out on ,me after years of great service using Tiltbridge
I went to the beginning of this thread, under Documentation, and both links you have posted are dead-end links now. Go figure after 6 years...
https://heltec.org/project/wifi-kit-32/
and https://www.adafruit.com/product/4290

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FERMENTRACK!!! 6 Years Young today!

 

[bloombrews]

@Thorrak
I liked using the mini esp32 board with led screen, the screen size does not matter, since I use Fermentrack and look at my computer screen for the Tilt graph readouts. Also, the big TFT screen will crack very easily if it falls off your fermentor.... I know from experience
I see on Aliexpress, there are now "large" onboard screen mini esp boards available, but not sure if they are supported here?
We all thank YOU, for working so hard on these projects, so Us Else, can make Great Beer Again!
Happy Birthday

 

[Thorrak]

@Thorrak
I liked using the mini esp32 board with led screen, the screen size does not matter, since I use Fermentrack and look at my computer screen for the Tilt graph readouts. Also, the big TFT screen will crack very easily if it falls off your fermentor.... I know from experience
I see on Aliexpress, there are now "large" onboard screen mini esp boards available, but not sure if they are supported here?
We all thank YOU, for working so hard on these projects, so Us Else, can make Great Beer Again!
Happy Birthday

Well, Happy Birthday TiltBridge, at least.

For some reason I keep managing to release things right about this time - TiltBridge in late March, Fermentrack in late April, and - if memory serves - Fermentrack 2 was opened up for use right around this time as well. I was hoping to have some new (versions of existing) things to release right about now as well, but we’re traveling at the moment and I didn’t want to risk breaking things when I wasn’t near home. Keep an eye open for the newest versions of both TiltBridge and BrewPi-ESP this coming weekend.

With regards to hardware, I’ve been trying to nudge people away from the OLED models for new builds as the code to support them just seems to keep growing. I have no plans on dropping support for them currently but I can’t guarantee any new board will ultimately work with the firmware, so it’s trial and error at the moment.

My recommendation in your case if you’re looking for a smaller profile board would be this one: https://a.co/d/23JGmci

Although I have never used that board and can’t guarantee that it will work, looking at the pin out it seems correct. What you are specifically looking for is a pin out similar to this:



I note this, as while searching just now I saw at least one other board that didn’t have the right MOSI pin and therefore would not work. Just something to keep in mind.

Regardless - glad to hear you got so many years of service out of your last TiltBridge. Fingers crossed this one gives you many more years to come!

 

[Thorrak]

TiltBridge 2.0 - Alpha Now Available​

After months of development, I’m excited to announce TiltBridge 2.0 is now available for alpha testing!

TiltBridge 2 is a complete rework of the original TiltBridge, with major improvements across the board—from the user interface to hardware support and beyond.

What's New in TiltBridge 2?​

New Web Interface
TiltBridge 2 now features a modern, Vue-based interface—similar to Fermentrack 2 and the latest (v16) BrewPi firmware. The new UI makes setup smoother and simplifies connecting your TiltBridge to cloud services and logging platforms.

ESP32-S3 Hardware Support
TiltBridge 2 adds support for ESP32-S3-based boards, adding another modern chipset as an option for your brewery. Although the recommended hardware remains the ESP32, this added flexibility gives you options if the preferred controller is in short supply.

Multilingual Support
Out of the box, TiltBridge 2's web interface now supports English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Dutch. Translations are machine-generated to start, but any suggestions for improvement -- or requests for additional translations! -- are welcome.

Coming Soon: Fermentrack 2 Integration
Native support for Fermentrack 2 is on the way! Once added, your Tilt readings will sync automatically to Fermentrack 2, ensuring real-time tracking of gravity and temperature alongside your other brewing data. While this feature isn’t in the alpha yet, it will land before the beta release.

Ready to Test?​

TiltBridge 2 is still in alpha, but it's stable and ready for early adopters to try out. Whether you’ve used the original TiltBridge or are just looking to breathe new life into your Tilt Hydrometer, now’s the perfect time to jump in.

TiltBridge 2 is available on BrewFlasher, BrewFlasher Web, and BrewFlasher Command Line Edition, in addition to in the next branch on GitHub.



Got feedback, bug reports, or language suggestions? Drop them here or submit them via GitHub. Thanks for giving TiltBridge 2 a try—and happy brewing!

 

[Gozie Boy]

@Thorrak, this is terrific work and I'm very impressed by your innovation and diligence in pursuing this over many years. I have been following TiltBridge over all of this time because I have the need for such a product. I'm curious as to whether the ultimate goal of this project is to have a "black box" that is more or less plug 'n play, essentially a "commercial" product for the masses? Many/most of us do not have the technical experience and expertise to build boards, wire up/test, debug, and go through everything that is currently needed to create one of these. In the meantime, I will continue to watch "from the outside" with interest!

 

[Thorrak]

@Thorrak, this is terrific work and I'm very impressed by your innovation and diligence in pursuing this over many years. I have been following TiltBridge over all of this time because I have the need for such a product. I'm curious as to whether the ultimate goal of this project is to have a "black box" that is more or less plug 'n play, essentially a "commercial" product for the masses? Many/most of us do not have the technical experience and expertise to build boards, wire up/test, debug, and go through everything that is currently needed to create one of these. In the meantime, I will continue to watch "from the outside" with interest!

Thanks for your interest in the project!

The answer to this question is - unfortunately - “it’s complicated”. Since this device uses a radio, any commercial sale would require FCC certification. It used to be that if you were using packaged radio modules, as long as those modules were certified, you could rely on their certification, but the law changed a while back such that (per my understanding!) any hardware modification would result in the need for recertification. There is an exemption for kits that require assembly (which is why you can buy uncertified modules today) but aside from using that exemption I would have to seek certification which per my understanding can cost upwards of $10k.

With that said, there are now devices on the market that are already certified that come with all the necessary hardware to run TiltBridge. In theory, I could take one of these devices, install the TiltBridge firmware, and sell that legally - but given the current tariff environment this would be incredibly cost prohibitive as I would not be the manufacturer of the hardware.

Thankfully, even without me providing a pre-built device, building a TiltBridge is pretty straightforward:



While one day things may change and I might be able to offer one, for now I would recommend taking a look at that video and seeing if this is something you might be comfortable attempting. One of the best things about TiltBridge is that - as a single component solution - even if it doesn’t work, you’re not out all that much!

 

[mijaba]

Hey @Thorrak, good morning!

I've been testing v2-alpha for a while and noticed a couple of minor bugs in the web UI:

• Even though the JSON is providing the correct values for each Tilt reading, the web UI isn't rendering them.

• I configured a couple of Target integrations and pressed Save. The values disappeared until I did a full page reload (F5), after which they reappeared. (Kind of hard to explain — let me know if I wasn’t clear enough.)

By the way, the new UI looks amazing and seems Dark Mode ready! Both my integrations (MQTT and Brewfather) are working perfectly as usual. Awesome job, man!

I'm still trying to find some spare time to start working on the LVG library. I was able to build, compile, and run the “next” version on the round display based on the S3 chip.

 

[Gozie Boy]

Thanks for this response. I'm an ME, and most of us are notoriously dangerous in dealing with electrons...! Having said this, I did make a Kal controller (from a kit) and survived, so I can sometimes follow simple instructions, and your video is great. I just know that from this string of posts it could get into "deep, dark technical discussions" that are waters into which I dare not wade! But I could give this a try, and risk a few dollars and time.

As for the radio regs, it seems I recall from my days as a late teen dabbling with radios and walky-talkies, that different regs dealt with and sometimes exempted low powered devices. Of course that was maybe 50 years ago (YIKES!!) and the world has changed several times since then. Thanks again!

 

[Thorrak]

Hey @Thorrak, good morning!

I've been testing v2-alpha for a while and noticed a couple of minor bugs in the web UI:

• Even though the JSON is providing the correct values for each Tilt reading, the web UI isn't rendering them.

View attachment 874735

• I configured a couple of Target integrations and pressed Save. The values disappeared until I did a full page reload (F5), after which they reappeared. (Kind of hard to explain — let me know if I wasn’t clear enough.)

By the way, the new UI looks amazing and seems Dark Mode ready! Both my integrations (MQTT and Brewfather) are working perfectly as usual. Awesome job, man!

I'm still trying to find some spare time to start working on the LVG library. I was able to build, compile, and run the “next” version on the round display based on the S3 chip.

That's on me -- the UI doesn't automatically rebuild from the user interface repo, so if I don't manually update it then it gets an old version. I've just updated it, and deleted/re-released alpha 1 -- this version should work.

(I also noticed that I hadn't made the UI repo public - that's now fixed as well)

 

[bloombrews]

@Thorrak, this is terrific work and I'm very impressed by your innovation and diligence in pursuing this over many years. I have been following TiltBridge over all of this time because I have the need for such a product. I'm curious as to whether the ultimate goal of this project is to have a "black box" that is more or less plug 'n play, essentially a "commercial" product for the masses? Many/most of us do not have the technical experience and expertise to build boards, wire up/test, debug, and go through everything that is currently needed to create one of these. In the meantime, I will continue to watch "from the outside" with interest!

If a 65 year old Plumber can get the Fermentrack and Tiltbridge with Brewflasher, to work after a few stabs, then it can't be too complicated.
Just follow the "Read Me" directions, and after a few beers later - You got a working brewery automation with graphs!
It is wonderful, that we non-programmers have a few people out there that are nice enough to share their hard work with us all ! Agree!

 

[Bago-0]

I am using fermentrack and Tiltbridge but also use beer smith. What is recommend to send Tiltbridge data to beer smith?

 

[Thorrak]

I am using fermentrack and Tiltbridge but also use beer smith. What is recommend to send Tiltbridge data to beer smith?

Does Beer Smith have the ability to take gravity data? I didn’t think it tracked anything other than recipes.

 

[day_trippr]

There is a Session section for each recipe sheet that one can input time-stamped SG data and produce a plot, but I do not know if the input can be pushed via beerxml or other means...

Cheers!

 

[Thorrak]

Welp. As @day_trippr noted, it looks like there isn't an API that I could tap into in order to push data, but if anyone who knows Brad wants to reach out and see if he's interested in making something work I'd be happy to try to get an integration built

 

[Bago-0]

Looks like newest version has csv import and google sheet. Would one be better than the other?

 

[bloombrews]

@Bago-0 , I also use all 3 for years now and wondering why you would find the need to use a beer recipe software to plot graphs?
Fermetrack and BrewPi remix, does that very well on their own. It's been a while since I sent my Tilt data to a Google Sheets, but it does also work. Sheets did have a few problems for me... probably just my lack of understanding how to incorporate Tiltbridge with Sheets.
But back to "Why do you want to do that?" question??

 

[Thorrak]

@bloombrews I'm with you, and yet the ability to push Fermentrack data to other, third party services is the most requested "missing" feature people want in Fermentrack 2:



For TiltBridge I'm even less shocked -- the whole point of a TiltBridge is to send data to wherever you want it to go - the unfortunate bit is that there isn't a way to actually get that data to Beer Smith.

Looks like newest version has csv import and google sheet. Would one be better than the other?

Until I get Fermentrack 2 integration for gravity finished, I don't think there's an easy way to get TiltBridge data into a CSV that wouldn't require sending it to Google Sheets first anyways, so CSV would just end up being Google Sheets with extra steps. I'd start there and see where it leads.

 

[Bago-0]

@bloombrews , I don't really use beersmith to follow the active fermentation but like to log the final data in my recipe when the brew is done. Then I store the brewed recipe in my beersmith brew log and can go back and reference it later if needed.

 

[bloombrews]

@bloombrews , I don't really use beersmith to follow the active fermentation but like to log the final data in my recipe when the brew is done. Then I store the brewed recipe in my beersmith brew log and can go back and reference it later if needed.

I see your point there, to put everything in one place. I do often need to go back to previous brews to see the temperature profile I used and it is not "quick enough" for me to have beersmith open and then go open up Fermentrack and find the logs....
I just got in the habit since 1994, to log manually in my Brew-log records book, the important points - like what temp I started at, then how many days I used a beer-profile, beer-constant, and finally when I racked out and shutdown the Fermentrack logging.
I never used beersmith to look at any graphs, so maybe I can welcome myself to 2025 and have the profiles I ran, next to the recipe.. Briliant !

 

[RocketBrewer]

@Thorrak,
I've updated my Tiltbridge to V2.0 and wondering if I have everything set up right. I got it connected to wifi fine, configured time zone offset etc., configured my google sheets targets, and started a test using my green tilt. The google sheet started fine and emailed me a link, but the tiltbridge doesn't display the name I assigned the "Beer". Also, the old version used to have a link to the google sheet that had been broken for a while. I was hoping that was going to be fixed on this version, but I can't tell if it's even got a link now. When I click on the Tilt link, it just reloads the same page. Am I missing something? Here is a screen shot of what I'm seeing after starting the green Tilt "Test1" log.

 

[Thorrak]

@Thorrak,
I've updated my Tiltbridge to V2.0 and wondering if I have everything set up right. I got it connected to wifi fine, configured time zone offset etc., configured my google sheets targets, and started a test using my green tilt. The google sheet started fine and emailed me a link, but the tiltbridge doesn't display the name I assigned the "Beer". Also, the old version used to have a link to the google sheet that had been broken for a while. I was hoping that was going to be fixed on this version, but I can't tell if it's even got a link now. When I click on the Tilt link, it just reloads the same page. Am I missing something? Here is a screen shot of what I'm seeing after starting the green Tilt "Test1" log.
View attachment 875576

Apologies for the delay in responding to this -- I got a chance to dig in, and there appears to be three issues here:


Data doesn't get logged to Google Sheets with TiltBridge 2

This appears to be timeout-related, likely an unintended change resulting from updates to the upstream framework used to build TiltBridge. Google Scripts takes awhile to process the data being sent, which results in the firmware timing out and closing the connection. This is a simple fix (increase the timeouts) - I've got that fix built and tested, and have released it as v2.0.0-alpha2.


Google Scripts doesn't respond as expected to data pushes

The Google Script is supposed to respond with a JSON object when data is pushed, but isn't - even when it successfully logs data. It's responding with an error message - both to an actual TiltBridge device as well as when I try to manually test from my laptop. This issue appears to be related to something in Google Scripts/Google Sheets itself, which is admittedly not my area of expertise. I'm going to continue working to debug it, but cannot promise a fix. If I do manage to fix it, it will require redeploying the central "TiltBridge Spreadsheet" (or, at a minimum, updating the Google Scripts code to match the update). I'll post here once I have an answer.


Incorrect/Broken "Sheets" Link in the TiltBridge UI

Unfortunately, fixing this link is predecated on resolving the "response" issue above, as the primary purpose of the JSON object is to capture the link to the Google sheet. This is why the link stopped working for the old version of TiltBridge as well -- the problem is with Google Scripts, not with TiltBridge. Assuming I can fix the Scripts issue I should be able to fix this one - if I can't, then I'll probably just remove the link.

 

[RocketBrewer]

No worries about the delay, thanks for the response.

Data doesn't get logged to Google Sheets with TiltBridge 2

This appears to be timeout-related, likely an unintended change resulting from updates to the upstream framework used to build TiltBridge. Google Scripts takes awhile to process the data being sent, which results in the firmware timing out and closing the connection. This is a simple fix (increase the timeouts) - I've got that fix built and tested, and have released it as v2.0.0-alpha2.

After upgrading to TiltBridge 2 and configuring everything, it did start Google Sheets OK and continue to update it (sorry if that wasn't clear before). The only issues I was having with the TiltBridge 2 was....

1) It no longer displays the name of the beer after starting the Google Sheets logging, it still only displays the Tilt color.

2) The link from the Tilt display on TiltBridge 2 no longer goes to the Google Sheet, It just reloads the Tiltbridge main page. The link has been broken on TiltBridge 1 for a while too, but after clicking the link, it would display an error message about something not being configured right with Google Sheets. Both versions would start the google sheet and log to it, just the links have been broken. Not a big deal, just a nice feature when it works.

Thanks again!

 

[Thorrak]

No worries about the delay, thanks for the response.

After upgrading to TiltBridge 2 and configuring everything, it did start Google Sheets OK and continue to update it (sorry if that wasn't clear before). The only issues I was having with the TiltBridge 2 was....

1) It no longer displays the name of the beer after starting the Google Sheets logging, it still only displays the Tilt color.

2) The link from the Tilt display on TiltBridge 2 no longer goes to the Google Sheet, It just reloads the Tiltbridge main page. The link has been broken on TiltBridge 1 for a while too, but after clicking the link, it would display an error message about something not being configured right with Google Sheets. Both versions would start the google sheet and log to it, just the links have been broken. Not a big deal, just a nice feature when it works.

Thanks again!

Both of these are due to the issues with the Google Scripts response I noted, unfortunately. If I can figure out what they changed and fix it, then I should be able to get this working again for both TiltBridge 1 and TiltBridge 2.

 

[Thorrak]

I just pushed out Alpha 3 of TiltBridge 2.0, which brings with it a new implementation of the calibration workflow.

Calibrate your TiltBridge's gravity readings by either entering a known calibration equation, or by measuring the gravity at specific Tilt readings and letting TiltBridge calculate your calibration equation for you. The new workflow now saves your data points to flash, making it easier to come back later and adjust.

Note - Data points will NOT persist between reflashes of the TiltBridge firmware. Please make note of them (or your calibration equation!) before reflashing.

Alpha 3 is now available on GitHub or via BrewFlasher.

 

[ddrum2000]

Hi everyone. I'm looking to build a tiltbridge but many of the parts listed on the website are either no longer available or have long lead times. I was looking for some board and oled display suggestions available from Amazon. Thanks.

 

[Thorrak]

Hi everyone. I'm looking to build a tiltbridge but many of the parts listed on the website are either no longer available or have long lead times. I was looking for some board and oled display suggestions available from Amazon. Thanks.

Although I've not used either of these personally, I think they should work:

ESPI screen: https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-Display-Bluetooth-Internet-Development/dp/B07X1W16QS

OLED screen: https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-Display-Bluetooth-Internet-Development/dp/B07DKD79Y9

 

[ddrum2000]

Although I've not used either of these personally, I think they should work:

ESPI screen: https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-Display-Bluetooth-Internet-Development/dp/B07X1W16QS

OLED screen: https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-Display-Bluetooth-Internet-Development/dp/B07DKD79Y9

Thanks for the items. Will the display on either of these, show the temp and the Gravity just like the original hardware? Also any reason to chose one over the other?