Why Arduino/Raspbury Pi/Spark/Beaglebone?

[aamcle]

There are a huge number of development boards out there, some more capable than others but individually I don't suppose they will be around too long.

So why not use the PC you have with an I/O board, yes the board will cost, or better still Modbus ( I'm trying to get on top of IGSS 50) and easily available standard components.

What's the fascination with tweaky little dev boards? Cost by the time you have all the bits together your PC and Modbus or an I/O board is probably cheaper.


Atb. Aamcle

 

[Hoppity]

My PC doesn't live in the basement and I always wanted to play with Linux.

 

[BrunDog]

What I/O board?

-BD

 

[MrShake]

I'd say quite a number of people either don't have a spare computer, or don't want to drag one out to the brewery, so a small, compact controller is appealing

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

How is C++ and I2C not "standard"? It doesnt get any more standard and cheap components wise than that.

A PC will never be cheaper unless you already have the parts, but i also dont want a midtower in my garage with my Brewery setup when i can have a tiny RPI in a electrical panel mounted on the wall.

For things like the BrewPi it works pretty well using a PC, but thats only because your still interfacing with the Arduino over USB...i still recommend a RPI as it generally runs better and cooler than any PC will.

 

[aamcle]

I'm not too sure about cheap,

You already have a PC
Netbooks are inexpensive
Netbooks are small.

Dev boards are cheap
Cost to add a display
Power supply
Need a nice case

Etc etc. It all adds up

Quite a few dev board builds have a server at that point you need a computer/tablet/phone anyway.
If they don't have a server then your usually limited to a small display of just a few lines and a poor control interface, push buttons or rotary encoder.

Of course all this is mute if your building a system for the pleasure of well, "building it".

Aamcle

 

[BrunDog]

Still would like to know what I/O board you would suggest? When I built my system I wanted to use a PC but could not identify an I/O board that had what I wanted in terms of Digital and analog I/O, PID library, universal library (VB.NET), and cost.

-BD

 

[aamcle]

I'm actually favouring the simple way a serial port and Modbus, but the following boards may do what you want.

https://www.pc-control.co.uk/control/products/boards.php

http://www.phidgets.com

Try something like IGSS 50 a serial port, Modbus aware PId , Modbus relay, sensors and so on.


Atb. Aamcle

 

[MrShake]

Another big plus for the dev board route is existing software. There are firmwares out there for arduini, rpi, beaglebone, and others, ready to use, just wire it up!

IMHO, programming is one of the biggest hurdles to the automation seeking brewer in general.

 

[aamcle]

That's a issue for me, I cant do the programming I can load and run it I made a RasPi easily enough. However without the skill to dive into the code I'm wary of systems that I don't understand and looking around the net they spawn errors.


Aamcle

 

[BigBlock]

I havent looked into the cost of pc I/O lately, but in the past its been a bit pricy. I use an arduino as a cheap I/O expansion for my plc, although if I were to start from scratch I could prob just use the arduino. For around $25 on ebay I have a nano with terminal block base, 5 temp sensors that perform about as well as rtds, and it talks modbus. Im also able to do sw filtering and calculations prior to sending back to the plc/hmi (using igss free 50 for hmi). Its easy to spend more than that on a single 4-20ma transducer. The cost savings allowed me to by some totally uneeded but cool hardware like a vfd for my pump.

I have a mech background and it wasn't too bad to pick up the programming for the arduino. Patience and a lot of time with the tutorials, examples and forums have helped a lot. Start with blink and hello world, and proceede to tackle 1 task at a time until the system comes together. I just grab the laptop in the evenings when tbe wife is watching tv and test out some code.

If there is some cheap pc I/O I'd be interested in learning more about it. The only time I've used pc I/o was over a decade ago with pctarget from matlab to an ni daq card.

 

[BrunDog]

I'm actually favouring the simple way a serial port and Modbus, but the following boards may do what you want.

https://www.pc-control.co.uk/control/products/boards.php

http://www.phidgets.com

Try something like IGSS 50 a serial port, Modbus aware PId , Modbus relay, sensors and so on.


Atb. Aamcle

Not sure you have fully researched... Phidgets boards are very expensive and you need multiple (temperature board alone is $100). Add more and you are way out of bounds compared to a Duino, Pi, or BCS. The pc-control you showed isn't much better.

Might wanna see what's in the room before you kick down the door and pump the shotgun, eh?

-BD

 

[thekraken]

I have a hard time believing a computer would be cheaper than an mcu. My controller is powered by a $3 arduino. I paid 200 times that for my PC when it was new...

It's also wrapped up in a compact water tight package, not sure how I'd do that cheaply and elegantly with a computer.

 

[aamcle]

After a bit more price checking I take it back PC I/O boards are expensive, even Modbus components aren't the cheapest option.

I'm using an old net book running a simple HMI to provide an interface to a Omega brand Modbus programmable PID. It's so much easier than poking buttons and it offers a clear display of the variables, parameters and so on, it even supports graphs.

Aamcle

 

[Capslock118]

Here are some points to consider (also, this is not intended to be rude, just a brain dump with little thought on tact):

- The power requirements for small boards such as the Arduino line or RPi cost far less in energy than a typical PC.

-Resource requirements: Take BrewPi for an example, you do not need a PCs worth of resources to accomplish its tasks, so it's fairly wasteful to use a PC for a project like that.

- There is a fundamental difference between the purpose for an Arduino and a PC. An arduino is a microcontroller, its single purpose is to perform I/O. A PC is for general computation (spreadsheets, games, web browser, email, etc etc). For dependability and uptime when controlling physical devices, you go with a microcontroller (it doesn't have to be a dev board), all of your appliances do not use PCs to run.

-To extend my second point, an RPi is closer to a PC than an Arduino as it's a general computing device; we can't really compare the two. I wouldn't use an RPi to perform a job that an Arduino could do (i realize that you technically can).

-Keep in mind, as you said, something like Arduino/Spark/Baegalbone is ultimately a prototyping/development board. They are technically not meant for use in a production capacity (though honestly, i do). Technically after you have completed your project development you would complete it by building a custom board(s) for it.

-I don't have a pc, I have a laptop I use for development (my job), a tablet for pleasure, and a phone. I'm not using any of those things for single-purpose projects; that's exactly where my handful of arduinos and raspberry pis come in; and none of my projects use a screen or a nice case because they are all tucked away, busy automating my life and just sending me notifications when something goes wrong (rare).

-it's not in everyone's blood to find fun in programming, but i do so that's the big reason for me to use these boards. Otherwise i'd just buy a product that does the same thing for twice the price.

hope that helps give a different perspective.

 

[aamcle]

For fun I understand and fully support

As it happens I have an Arduino and a RaspberryPi I hadn't intended to use for brewing but I could. I worry that without real understanding of the code I'd end up with something that " sorta works some of the time" but is mainly a pain in the ass.

Is the Strange Brew project at a load n go stage?
Without coding skills would I be able to successfully complete the build?
Finally and most importantly will it work successfully with a GrainFather clone ie single vessel recirculating BIAB?

Aamcle

 

[MrShake]

Here are some points to consider (also, this is not intended to be rude, just a brain dump with little thought on tact):

- The power requirements for small boards such as the Arduino line or RPi cost far less in energy than a typical PC.

-Resource requirements: Take BrewPi for an example, you do not need a PCs worth of resources to accomplish its tasks, so it's fairly wasteful to use a PC for a project like that.

- There is a fundamental difference between the purpose for an Arduino and a PC. An arduino is a microcontroller, its single purpose is to perform I/O. A PC is for general computation (spreadsheets, games, web browser, email, etc etc). For dependability and uptime when controlling physical devices, you go with a microcontroller (it doesn't have to be a dev board), all of your appliances do not use PCs to run.

-To extend my second point, an RPi is closer to a PC than an Arduino as it's a general computing device; we can't really compare the two. I wouldn't use an RPi to perform a job that an Arduino could do (i realize that you technically can).

-Keep in mind, as you said, something like Arduino/Spark/Baegalbone is ultimately a prototyping/development board. They are technically not meant for use in a production capacity (though honestly, i do). Technically after you have completed your project development you would complete it by building a custom board(s) for it.

-I don't have a pc, I have a laptop I use for development (my job), a tablet for pleasure, and a phone. I'm not using any of those things for single-purpose projects; that's exactly where my handful of arduinos and raspberry pis come in; and none of my projects use a screen or a nice case because they are all tucked away, busy automating my life and just sending me notifications when something goes wrong (rare).

-it's not in everyone's blood to find fun in programming, but i do so that's the big reason for me to use these boards. Otherwise i'd just buy a product that does the same thing for twice the price.

hope that helps give a different perspective.

I think you nailed it man!!! Its also exactly why brewtroller is what it is, a custom board using an atmega chip!!

 

[donbrew]

I do have a couple of extra PC's that I found in the trash. They all are capable of Windows10, some have serial & parallel ports. Seems to me that someone that knew what they where doing could utilize one of the super I/o ports easily.

PCs do not have to be expensive! My RPI media client cost $100, the PC that is the media server was FREE.

 

[BrunDog]

Everybody had cheap PC hardware practically available. What I wanna see is the cheap I/O to go with it. Keep in mind it needs to read TC/RTD/NTC/DS temp sensors, have digital and/or analog I/O, and have a universal-ish programming API.

Best fit I found was $500 so went with a BCS and been very happy with it.

-BD

 

[aamcle]

Gents, can a Strange Brew build be completed without any coding skills?

Aamcle

 

[kwadric]

I basically use an Arduino as a cheap PC IO. I take sensor measurements and ship them to the pc over the serial bus. Then use a VB project to display the sensor readings and send settings to the Arduino. It isn't as easy as a USB board designed for reading temp sensors, but it was much cheaper. And at the time I was more concerned about cost than my time.

 

[GarrettVD]

Raspi/Beaglebone/Arduino etc. offer a pretty simple way of controlling external periphery via the GPIO pins. I've played around with the Raspi and there are drivers readily available to control the DS18B20 temperature sensor, and it's pretty simple to turn on / off some GPIO pins to control SSRs and other relays.

Personally I found the raspi a bit overkill, and I have some experience with programming for embedded systems, so I built my own temperature controller using an ATmega328P -- coincidentally the same MCU that is in the Arduino, I believe.

TL;DR: Just makes life easier if you got one.

 

[angrybits]

I'm playing around with maybe using a spare ASUS Atom-based tiny computer(1) with a POS-system touchscreen and a JavaFX-based UI. I'm thinking I will use an Arduino for interfacing with the physical components and talk to it over serial.

None of this is written in stone yet, as I am waiting on the touchscreen monitor to get here and working on the app prototype still, but it's entirely possible to ditch the RPi and not blow a small fortune on an IO card if you are willing to do very simple communication over a wire. At least in theory, time will tell.



(1) - The link is a bit old, I only spent a few hundred bucks and got a 4GB RAM stick and a 120GB SSD drive. It runs Win 7. It was originally to serve iTunes content but I retired it for a Mac Mini.