[Version 2 Release] RaspberryPints - Digital Taplist Solution

[2Kegger]

I did have one working through the Cat5 using my original alamode board. Then the power plug fell off when I unplugged it, so I got a new board. Wired everything up. I had all kinds of trouble flashing the new board. I did a fresh install on another SD card and was able to flash it. However I am now having issues where I plug in the power and ground to the bread board and when I plug in the meter cables, it shuts down the Pi. I'm guessing one or more of the cables is wired wrong or just not getting a connection causing it to short. Or my Alamode board is bad.

I did buy new solid cat5 cable (http://www.homedepot.com/p/Unbrande...y-5e-Riser-Internet-Wire-2700-0104C/202206477) and I'm going to give that a try. The other cables were 30AWG and each wire was so flimsy I thought they were going to snap off. On the plus side, I can just plug the ends of the new wires in without any soldering, though they are a little loose. I may have to solder on some male ends, but I think it will be more solid than the other wires I was using.

 

[crane]

I don't understand why people use cat5 for homebrewing. Anything above 26 gauge is a pain to work with and is too flimsy IMHO.

 

[2Kegger]

I agree, but it makes for a nice clean connection on a project box. And it's a single cable going to a flow meter instead of three if you get the adafruit meters.

 

[wbarber69]

If the arduino powers off when you plug in the meter then it is definitely hooked up wrong. As in the power is going to ground. Either your meter has a short in it or you are probably wiring in the sense to ground or vice versa.

 

[eulipion2]

Under the "My Kegs" section, would it be possible to make the comments portion optional? Trying to mark kegs as clean, I'm repeatedly told I need something in the comments.

 

[2Kegger]

So I tried my flow meters with very short cables and they work. I had 8' of cat5 previously. I tested them with a circuit tester and it did read 5v at 8'. I don't understand why they won't read...

So if the cat5 won't work, what would you suggest for wire to run 8'? The adafruit meters only come with 6" of wire.

 

[ChrisL_]

So I've been messing with this for weeks, and can't get it running. I had to get a new alamode board because the power plug got damaged on my old one. I hooked everything up by cat5 cable and soldered the wires I was going to use. Unfortunately, it's not ready any pours. Do you have any tips on how you used your network cables? Did you solder individual wires to a male connector to plug in? I used the blue, green and orange wires, with blue soldered to a wire for for data, green for ground and orange for power. I used these cables (http://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=102&cp_id=10208&cs_id=1020808&p_id=9551&seq=1&format=2) but think I should go with 24AWG. The wires were so thin. Any advice on the cables would be great!

Also, I found this on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002D0DK8E/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20). I'd think with this I'd just have to crimp on connectors and not need to solder anything. I could just plug in the solid wires to the boards. The only possible downside is the stiffness, but I can deal with that.

Hey 2Kegger, sorry I have not been around much lately. I did use a male connector but did not solder them. I twisted the wires and used heat shrinks to secure the connection. I am seeing your later post about it working with shorter cables. The one I used was a 6 foot cable. It is surprising that at just 8 feet it will not work.

 

[day_trippr]

Between the internal wiring in my controller, the cable from the controller to the keezer lid socket, the wire inside keezer lid to the meter patch panel mounted in the lid liner, and the original 6 foot meter leads, I bet I have at least 14 feet of wire from each meter to the AlaMode.

The wiring is mostly stranded 26awg - nothing smaller.
Zero issues.

All that said, for an 8 foot run I'd be surprised that cat wire won't work.
I'd try again...

Cheers!

 

[wbarber69]

Try using the twisted pairs as one wire. ie: use the green and it's striped mate use the orange and it's striped mate etc. as a single wire. Twist them together on each end. Cat5 uses different frequency in twists to try to eliminate signal noise crossing each wire. If you are using it too close to some em interference it could cause the signal to drop out or bleed into the unused lines. It's worth a try anyway.

 

[2Kegger]

Good idea! I'll give that a try.

 

[day_trippr]

For my 14 thousandth post...I got nothin' interesting to offer.
So I'm just gonna stick this here instead.


Cheers! (It's a fine week when all the kegs are green! )

 

[2Kegger]

So I tried another way of wiring my adafruit meters. I cut off the end and soldered on the wires directly. And guess what? It worked! On one anyway. I'll try the rest tomorrow.

 

[2Kegger]

Ok. I'm getting really frustrated with this! I went back and tried another meter and it didn't work. As a matter of fact, it caused my pi to power down. I know I got the colors right! I'm to the point I"m going to put it away and go without flow meters for a while and try again later. I'm actually thinking it might be a problem with my keystone pass throughs. They say they are pass throughs and the pins are the same on both sides, but something is getting messed up somewhere. Thanks for your help and advice on this issue. I was never concerned with knowing exactly how much I had anyway. I just used them to keep track of when I needed to brew again. For the record, this ISN'T a problem with the software. Clearly it's a hardware / wiring issue.

 

[wbarber69]

You might have a faulty meter or the coloring is wrong from the factory. Put a tester on continuity across the + and - and see if it shows full continuity. That'd be my guess. And I figured it could be an issue when I purchased mine cause they are so cheap, that's why I bought 4 when I only needed 2

 

[2Kegger]

I bought 10 when I only needed 5

 

[eulipion2]

Just upgraded Raspbian via clean install to "Jessie." Now I'm trying to reinstall RPints and I've hit a snag:

pi@rpints ~ $ sudo apt-get -y install chromium-browser
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package chromium-browser is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'chromium-browser' has no installation candidate

So, can/should I use another browser? Should I wait for Chromium to become available?

 

[crane]

Just upgraded Raspbian via clean install to "Jessie." Now I'm trying to reinstall RPints and I've hit a snag:

pi@rpints ~ $ sudo apt-get -y install chromium-browser
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package chromium-browser is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'chromium-browser' has no installation candidate

So, can/should I use another browser? Should I wait for Chromium to become available?

If you Google "chromium Jessie" you will find some info that chromium is not available for Jessie with the arm architecture yet. Here is a blog about manually installing it.

http://blog.valitov.me/2014/06/installing-google-chromium-on-arm.html?m=1

You could also try another browser like iceweasel (firefox).

 

[eulipion2]

If you Google "chromium Jessie" you will find some info that chromium is not available for Jessie with the arm architecture yet. Here is a blog about manually installing it.

http://blog.valitov.me/2014/06/installing-google-chromium-on-arm.html?m=1

You could also try another browser like iceweasel (firefox).

Thanks for that, crane! Iceweasel it is.

 

[wbarber69]

I think I was able to install on Jessie just by sudo apt-get install chromium. I may be wrong though I haven't even looked at my test laptop in a few months.

 

[crane]

I think I was able to install on Jessie just by sudo apt-get install chromium. I may be wrong though I haven't even looked at my test laptop in a few months.

Chromium for Jessie is available for x86 and amd64 architectures but not for arm. Your laptop is going to be x86 or amd64, whereas the Rpi is arm.

 

[wbarber69]

I wasn't aware of a Jessie release for the rpi. I guess I need to update

 

[CaptnDelta]

One last question. Did you change the following like TimL suggested?

Chang the following line in /includes/pours.php

$amount = $PULSE_COUNT / 21120;

to

$amount = $PULSE_COUNT / 1500;

I noticed that when you have that small a pulse count per volume, then you may have to change another value in the Alamode code, using the same procedure as when you changed the pin config (see here: http://raspberrypints.com/byo/step-9-configure-pi-hardware-flow-meters-wflow-meters/)

Just this time, in the following line:
https://github.com/RaspberryPints/R...arduino/raspberrypints/raspberrypints.ino#L68

change the '100' to something smaller (I used 35). Otherwise smaller pours (less than ~ 4 ounces) wouldn't register.

Cheers,
-Th

 

[2Kegger]

I noticed that when you have that small a pulse count per volume, then you may have to change another value in the Alamode code, using the same procedure as when you changed the pin config (see here: http://raspberrypints.com/byo/step-9-configure-pi-hardware-flow-meters-wflow-meters/)

Just this time, in the following line:
https://github.com/RaspberryPints/R...arduino/raspberrypints/raspberrypints.ino#L68

change the '100' to something smaller (I used 35). Otherwise smaller pours (less than ~ 4 ounces) wouldn't register.

Cheers,
-Th

THANK YOU! I knew there was something I was forgetting! I'll give that at try tonight after work.

 

[CaptnDelta]

It's been a bit quiet lately over at the RPints github repository, which is understandable; real live happens and may make it impossible to donate endless hours.

I had a couple of days over the last weekends finishing up my outdoor keezer build, and wound up fiddling with the code implementing a few things that I needed for it. Here's the break down:

Some bug fixes:

• Firefox support: fixed the mask problem for the SRM display
• fixed invalid keg state query when reducing number of taps
• the tap form no longer requires input of associated alamode pin (see below)

New features:

• now updates keg pours (and other stuff) to remote browser displays (no need for xdotools anymore)
• tap valve/solenoid control: a tap can now have a valve/solenoid associated, which shuts the tap off or turns it on. This is controlled from the admin panel. The hardware is controlled via the Raspberry Pi's GPIO, and can be configured in the admin panel
• fan (line cooling) control: RPINTS can now control a fan (or line cooling) output. The pin is configured in the admin panel. Two times can be set: the trigger time is the interval when the fan is turned on, and the fan time is the time how long the fan is running after it has been turned on
• New tap configuration panel: There is a new panel in the admin section that configures the taps and its associated hardware pins. If configured to use flow counters, the pin associated with each tap can be set here. If configured for tap valve control, the GPIO pin for the tap can be set here. This no longer makes it necessary to enter the flow pin in the tap list when tapping a keg. This panel also has the controls for the fan, if that's configured.
• added ability to use FireFox on Amazon FireTV as a tap list display

A couple screen shots are attached all the way below:

• First one is the new tap list with solenoid/valve indicators on the right.
• Second the new tap configuration panel
• Third shows the taplist icon on my FireTV home screen
• 4th is the tap list running on the AFTV.

The reason for the AFTV stuff is that I already had a outdoor TV hanging over where my taps are, and having yet another dedicated tap list monitor there would have looked a bit goofy. Also, there would have been hardly a way to get a HDMI cable there from the keezer. Now I can just use the remote to switch over to the tap list when done watching Kodi or Netflix.

So, this probably isn't ready for the end user, I have done little work to add this to or verify the installer. There are also a few extra modules needed, namely PyWebsockets and mod_python, this link has some more info to install those: https://github.com/HentschelT/RaspberryPints/blob/Version2/UPDATES.MD
It also needs an extra table in mysql, the sql to add this is added to the schema.sql. You also need to re-register the new flowmon script to /etc/init.d/ ; ps aux should now no longer show flow_mon.py but PintDispatch.py.

Just one word of caution: Don't run this outside of your home network/ firewall for now.

The repository is here: https://github.com/HentschelT/RaspberryPints/tree/Version2
I also added a pull request to the main RPints repo. Maybe the developers like it and merge it into the RPints distribution. It's based on Version2.
Disclaimer: Even tho this is based on Raspberry Pints, it's not a official release from the RPints developers, and it isn't endorsed as such.

If there is any interest on how I did the hardware side for the valves/solenoids/fan, let me know, I'll add that in another post.

Cheers,
-Th

 

[raysmithtx]

Those are all killer improvements. Especially the not having to enter the damn pin number every time you tap a keg. Are you going to make this "newbie friendly" so us with a lot less knowledge than you can install these improvements in our system?

 

[wbarber69]

Cool now rpints is becoming an even more wireless monitoring solution. Can't wait for this to all be cleaned up and hopefully added to the release. With my bluetooth pour monitor hack and something like this rpints could effectively be moved onto a vm and you can use any method available to view the tap list. Finally having the ability to use an external browser without having to use an auto refresh hack will make this a much cleaner solution.

 

[CaptnDelta]

Those are all killer improvements. Especially the not having to enter the damn pin number every time you tap a keg. Are you going to make this "newbie friendly" so us with a lot less knowledge than you can install these improvements in our system?

It depends a bit on how much you're willing to help

I just updated the repository with a version that doesn't require mod_python anymore (which can be a bit of a pain to install), so now the only extra step is to install pyWebSockets.

So essentially, if you wanna give this a whirl, start with a fresh SD card in your Pi (or if you have an extra Raspberry Pi, even better) and start a new install. Make sure you got backups of your current stuff!

Just run thru the install procedure as explained on the RPints web site (the w/ flowmeters stuff). On step 7, instead of downloading from the RPints repository, you use this link: https://github.com/HentschelT/RaspberryPints/tree/Version2 and click on "Download Zip". Proceed as usual, just substitute the file name of the downloaded .zip file accordingly in the remaining procedure.

Just before you go to Step 8, lets install the pyWebSocket library. This link has the details: https://github.com/google/pywebsocket/wiki , the short version is like this (in your raspberry pi's terminal):

cd ~
sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/google/pywebsocket.git
cd pywebsocket
python setup.py build
sudo python setup.py install

(Each line is a command you type into your Pi's terminal).

Now just finish the rest of the install. If something goes wrong, let me know.

The only other difference is in step, 9, the line

ps aux | grep flow_monitor.py

now changes to

ps aux | grep PintDispatch.py

This command just checks if the RPints server process has started.

Let me know how it goes...

Cheers,
-Th

 

[CaptnDelta]

Cool now rpints is becoming an even more wireless monitoring solution. Can't wait for this to all be cleaned up and hopefully added to the release. With my bluetooth pour monitor hack and something like this rpints could effectively be moved onto a vm and you can use any method available to view the tap list. Finally having the ability to use an external browser without having to use an auto refresh hack will make this a much cleaner solution.

BTW, there always was a way for remote updates over the network (via X11 forwarding), its just kinda kludgy and requires root on the client - something I didn't have on mine (AFTV).

Just implementing another change I wanted: Basically, the current version of the Alamode program only updates the RPi once a pour is finished, which means I can't find out if someone left a tap open (well, not until the thing is completely empty). Got a friend of mine who's taps are outside and a storm knocked a branch down onto his taps - 75 Gallon of beer made their way into the pool.

Maybe with this change I can avoid that, and avoid meeting this little guys brother in my back yard...


Cheers,
-Th

 

[CaptnDelta]

So, for anyone that tried to install this yesterday, pour updates may have not worked. I forgot to update one of the sql queries, mea culpa, sorry

I fixed that bug, and (hopefully as a consolation) added a couple other things:

• you can change the counts per gallons for your flow meters (the one where you used to have to edit 'pours.php') from the tap config screen.
  (I may revisit this, since I'd like to be able to set this on a per flow meter/tap basis. This would help if there are different flow meters on individual taps, and it seems to help the accuracy for flow meters with less flow count per gallon)
• if you got tap valves/solenoids installed, you now can set a value that is considered too much of a 'pour', and it shuts the tap off.
• if you kick a keg, the tap valve gets shut off; if you tap a keg, the valve turns on

Some instructions to install in this post:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=7130076&postcount=1387

For folks with the swissflow and other high-resolution meters, you may have to change the '200' in the following line
https://github.com/HentschelT/Raspb...arduino/raspberrypints/raspberrypints.ino#L84
in your 'raspberrypints.ino' file before uploading it to the alamode to something higher (probably around 2000?). Otherwise the alamode most likely won't be able to keep up and not report pours.

On that subject, I'd love to change this, such that the alamode could be configured directly from the Pi, including the pin count and the pin numbers. I just haven't figured how to programmatically reset the Alamode from the Pi (as in restart the sketch that does the counting). If anyone knows...

Cheers,
-Th

 

[raysmithtx]

I fixed that bug, and (hopefully as a consolation) added a couple other things:

• you can change the counts per gallons for your flow meters (the one where you used to have to edit 'pours.php') from the tap config screen.
  (I may revisit this, since I'd like to be able to set this on a per flow meter/tap basis. This would help if there are different flow meters on individual taps, and it seems to help the accuracy for flow meters with less flow count per gallon)
• if you got tap valves/solenoids installed, you now can set a value that is considered too much of a 'pour', and it shuts the tap off.
• if you kick a keg, the tap valve gets shut off; if you tap a keg, the valve turns on

Thank you for the work you are doing and the helpful links and instructions. I plan on giving this a shot on a new install later this week (time permitting).

What type of solenoids are you using? I tried some but they created so much turbulence that it really messed up my pours.

 

[CaptnDelta]

Thank you for the work you are doing and the helpful links and instructions. I plan on giving this a shot on a new install later this week (time permitting).

What type of solenoids are you using? I tried some but they created so much turbulence that it really messed up my pours.

Yea, the jury is still out on that. I'm still missing a few essential pieces to finish up my kegerator, but I did do a test run with a Koelsch that I had handy.

I used solenoids that are normally used in espresso machines. Removing the little filtering screen on the intake helped quite a bit. I also mounted it directly before the flow counters, and used a piece of silicone tubing inside the connector between the two, to keep the inside line diameter between the solenoid and the flow counter about the same. Also, I have a pretty long beer line run (16 ft), which appears to help out. In the end, I still have to see this working in all cases...

BTW, did you see my reply in the other RPints thread?

Cheers,
-Th

 

[2Kegger]

So I did a fresh install using the standard RPints files and I still can't get my adafruit flow meters working. I took one of them and plugged in about 8" of solid core wire to each and then in to the alamode board and still nothing. I changed the pour counts in both files. I'm at a loss. I have tried several different flow meters since I bought 10 of them. I have to be missing something. I may try your software just to see if it makes any difference.

 

[wbarber69]

Can you get them to register using the flow meter code provided by adafruit?

 

[2Kegger]

I will give that a try tonight. Thanks for the idea.

 

[CaptnDelta]

So I did a fresh install using the standard RPints files and I still can't get my adafruit flow meters working. I took one of them and plugged in about 8" of solid core wire to each and then in to the alamode board and still nothing. I changed the pour counts in both files. I'm at a loss. I have tried several different flow meters since I bought 10 of them. I have to be missing something. I may try your software just to see if it makes any difference.

Just a heads-up: Don't use it right now, I made a change last nite which may not work for your system. I may get around to fully implementing this later tonite. Basically, I found a way to reset the Alamode and make it read config parameters from the RPi. Which means that you won't have to recompile and reinstall the Alamode program (the .ino file) every time you change your taps. I just didn't get it finished last nite, I'll give a heads-up here when its going again.

As far as your counter problems, I noticed a few things that may prevent them from working:
* If you happen to dabble with your Pi's GPIO, *don't* do anything with pin 18. That's the reset line for the alamode, and will reboot it which means it most likely will loose serial communication with the Pi (which means no updates)
* Not all input pins on the alamode are created equal. Pin 5, 6, 7, 9, and 10 work for me.
* Once I got my code updated (hopefully later today), I added a decent amount of logging to see what's going on with the communication to the Alamode. This should give us a better idea where things fail.

Anyways, no worries, unless your alamode got fried in some way, we'll get you going.

Cheers,
-Th

 

[raysmithtx]

Just a heads-up: Don't use it right now, I made a change last nite which may not work for your system.

Thanks. I'll wait for your go ahead.

 

[2Kegger]

Sounds good. I'm off work on Wednesday-Friday so I will probably work on it some more then. Thanks for all the help!

 

[CaptnDelta]

Hi folks,

So, I made my updates last nite, but didn't get around to testing with actual flow meters, since SWMBO was already in bed and the whistling of me blowing thru the flow meters would have driven her mad...

Got around to testing today, and also added a few things that should make dealing with the flow meter stuff a little easier.

1. The RPints software now flashes the binary (the compiled arduino .ino file) to the alamode when it starts up. The hex file for this is included in the distribution.
2. The alamode software (the one that was flashed) is now able to listen for configuration parameters. What they are is explained below.

This means that you won't have to fiddle with the arduino IDE anymore to change parameters (in fact they are no longer in the same form in the code). You still have to install the arduino software (RPints uses it internally), but no need to change anything in that anymore and upload it etc..

Now for the mentioned parameters:
When changing the tap config, the software now uploads the number of flow meters and their pin numbers.
It also uploads:

1. the pour message delay: This is the time in milli-seconds that we wait for more counts to come in after the counter already stopped. It basically waits for that amount of time after the flow already stopped to see if it restarts again to be considered for the pour
2. the pour trigger count: that's the minimum flow meter count that needs to be received before it is considered a pour. For high-resolution meters like the swissflow, this should probably be around 200 to 300 (the original value was 300). For low-resolution meters, this needs to be set lower to not miss smaller pours (I got it at 25 on mine)
3. the kick trigger count: this is the count the flow meters need to issue within one millisecond to kick the keg. The original value was 30 for swissflow meters. This may not work too well on lower resolution meters, I set mine to 5 and it's not always triggering. If you don't want your keg to automatically be kicked when this counter trips, set this to a high value (500 should do for any counter)
4. the pour update count: This is the count after which the alamode reports a flow update to RPints. This is currently only used for the automatic shutoff when large pours occur. For high-resolution meters, a good value is probably around 1500 or 2000. For low-resolution meters, I've set mine to 250. If this value is too low for your flow meters, it may make the alamode miss pour counts, so high is better than low.

As a note, all but the last parameter were already in the original .ino file, they ware just hardcoded values.

The screen shot attached below shows the tap config screen as it is now, and you can see the text fields to change the alamode parameters in the middle. When you hit "Update Alamode Config", or if you hit any "Save Tap Config" or if you reduce the number of taps, the alamode is reset, the parameters are uploaded, and the alamode is again ready to count with the new settings. This process takes about 2 seconds.

As far as installing: I already posted some instructions a few posts ago here:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=7130076&postcount=1387.

Some additional notes on that:
Make sure you get the right Zip file from the github page, that page wants to switch on you to the master branch, but the changes are all in the 'Version2' branch. Here is a direct link to the zip file:
https://github.com/HentschelT/RaspberryPints/archive/Version2.zip

If you get thru the install, and the Pints web site shows up for the first time, in the admin panel go to the 'personalize' page (the little gear in the upper right corner), and enable everything but '4k monitor support' for now. Hit save.
With that you can set up your taps in the tap config panel by hitting "My tap config" on the left. You can set the valve pins even tho you don't have anything hooked up, it just doesn't do anything. You can use '0' for all valves, or use the valve pin values in the screen shot, they should be ok, but *don't* ever use pin 18, it resets the alamode.

If you get up and running, you can disable solenoids and fan support in the personalize page (it can always be turned on later).

To trouble shoot your (non-reading) flow meters: the flowmon service now logs what it has been up to to the file /var/log/rpints.log. This file gets overwritten when the service is restarted (just so it doesn't fill up your sd card over time). This also means that in case of trouble, you'll have to save that file *before* rebooting or restarting the flowmon service, so that we have a chance to see what went wrong.
You can look at this log via:

more /var/log/rpints.log

if you wanna see it update live in a terminal, use

tail -f /var/log/rpints.log

Good luck with the install, post any problems into the thread here. For a meaningful problem report, please include the following two files:
* /var/log/apache2/error.log
* /var/log/rpints.log
You can rename those to a .xml extension since the forum software doesn't allow you something with an extension with .log (silly stuff)...
Whatever you do, make sure to have good backups of your current stuff!

Have fun,
-Th

 

[raysmithtx]

WOOHOO! The wife is out of town this weekend...I know what I'll be doing. Thanks again for all the information and taking the time to explain it to those with less coding/RPI knowledge.

 

[2Kegger]

I'm working on this right now. Just a clarification. I have to install the arduino software, but I don't actually have to flash anything? I didn't flash anything yet. I entered some beers and kegs, and those worked fine. However, when I go to save taps, nothing saves. Also, when I go to save pin numbers, nothing saves.

I did not do step 9 at all in the original instructions other than plugging a couple meters in. In the software I was able to tell it 5 pins and that worked. It just won't let me save the pin numbers.

Thanks for all the work on this! I'm excited to get it up and running! These upgrades are awesome.