Fermentrack: Fermentation monitoring & BrewPi-www Replacement for Raspberry Pi
- Thread starter Thorrak
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Oof. I had one of the sainsmart SSR boards that I tried to use to power a crockpot (was attempting to mash in a crock pot - didn't work) which pulled waaaay more power than the SSR could handle. It failed such that the crockpot would never turn off. When I looked at the relay itself, the sides had swollen up nice and big. Thats when I decided that mechanical relays were definitely the way to go.
Very Brief Update
After a long hiatus, I picked Fermentrack back up again this weekend to squish some bugs & try to get the "push" support finished off. While the push support still needs some work before it can be released to the public, I did release a few small bugfixes to the 'dev' branch which will likely cause the "Update from GitHub" message to pop up.
The biggest fix is to cause log files generated from "spawned" processes to now have a maximum filesize. On my main Fermentrack box I noticed that my "Tilt" logfile had ballooned to over 1GB in size. Not good. This fix causes log files from things like Tilts & BrewPi Devices to have a maximum size of ~2MB. Hopefully this helps a few people reclaim some much needed space on their 'Pis!
After a long hiatus, I picked Fermentrack back up again this weekend to squish some bugs & try to get the "push" support finished off. While the push support still needs some work before it can be released to the public, I did release a few small bugfixes to the 'dev' branch which will likely cause the "Update from GitHub" message to pop up.
The biggest fix is to cause log files generated from "spawned" processes to now have a maximum filesize. On my main Fermentrack box I noticed that my "Tilt" logfile had ballooned to over 1GB in size. Not good. This fix causes log files from things like Tilts & BrewPi Devices to have a maximum size of ~2MB. Hopefully this helps a few people reclaim some much needed space on their 'Pis!
Bigdaddyale
Well-Known Member
I just did a run of Thorrak's SMD RJ- 45 PCBs. If anybody needs a board let me know.
TonyB
Member
Thanks to help from here I have Fermentrack up and running with a couple of DS18B20s attached as Beer Temperature and Fridge Temperature though just recording room temperature at the moment and running in Beer Constant mode which seem to be running ok. However, I'm getting spurious readings for Fridge Setting which I don't understand have I accidentally set something I shouldn't.
On a linked note, there is good information about setting up Fermentrack but can't find any information on actually using it. I've searched for the original Brewpi documentation but that seems to have been deleted from Brewpi's website. Can anyone point me to a user manual.
On a linked note, there is good information about setting up Fermentrack but can't find any information on actually using it. I've searched for the original Brewpi documentation but that seems to have been deleted from Brewpi's website. Can anyone point me to a user manual.
Everything should be in the docs here: http://docs.fermentrack.com/en/master/
...but that said, if anything isn’t there, doesn’t make sense, or is otherwise unclear then the docs need to be updated. What kind of thing are you trying to find out?
TonyB
Member
You'll have to bear with me, I'm not a home brewer but setting it up for a friend who is. It's probably simple stuff but I suppose I'm a little nervous making changes just in case I mess up the software.
What is Fridge Constant Mode?
What is Fridge Setting measuring and why is this is this showing spurious readings. Should this be a fixed value same as Beer Setting, if so how do I set this?
With a heating only set up (no cooling), can I remove the fridge components from the Dashboard?
Whilst I don't brew, I do do some food fermenting which is becoming more popular and Fermentrack would be a good tool to help home/artisan producers, with only cosmetic changes to the dashboard label fields.
Thanks
What is Fridge Constant Mode?
What is Fridge Setting measuring and why is this is this showing spurious readings. Should this be a fixed value same as Beer Setting, if so how do I set this?
With a heating only set up (no cooling), can I remove the fridge components from the Dashboard?
Whilst I don't brew, I do do some food fermenting which is becoming more popular and Fermentrack would be a good tool to help home/artisan producers, with only cosmetic changes to the dashboard label fields.
Thanks
- Fridge Constant mode attempts to maintain the Chamber temperature - the air temperature inside the fridge. As opposed to Beer Constant, which focuses on the Beer temperature.
- Fridge Setting reflects the control logic decision on which direction (and how fast) the temperature needs to change to maintain the target setting. This trace will generally move in the opposite direction from Chamber and Beer temperature readings.
- Interesting question. I've never read of anyone using Fermentrack or BrewPi or BrewPiLess for heat-only function. I'll defer this one to @Thorrak
Cheers!
- Fridge Setting reflects the control logic decision on which direction (and how fast) the temperature needs to change to maintain the target setting. This trace will generally move in the opposite direction from Chamber and Beer temperature readings.
- Interesting question. I've never read of anyone using Fermentrack or BrewPi or BrewPiLess for heat-only function. I'll defer this one to @Thorrak
Cheers!
TonyB
Member
Thanks DT, that helps. The home brewery is in a cool well ventilated out-building in west Scotland and rarely sees temperatures above 20C (68F).
Heat only should work just fine, but you’d need to make sure you size your heater properly (you probably need less than you think) and the ambient chamber temperature is much cooler than you would ever want the fermentation run at. Would be good to do a test first, though, before adding anything you’d be sad to have to throw out!
Testing with fridge constant (or “chamber constant” in your case!) mode is perfect.
Out of curiousity, what kinds of foods are you planning to ferment?
Testing with fridge constant (or “chamber constant” in your case!) mode is perfect.
Out of curiousity, what kinds of foods are you planning to ferment?
TonyB
Member
One of the 'big' and different food books published this year is The Noma Guide to Fermentation, from the previously no 1 world rated restaurant, which updates some of the techniques for fermentation. The book includes a couple of diy fermentation chambers mainly operated using an inkbird or similar controller plus heater and humidifier for some fermentations.
There are a small number of different processes outlined, the 3 main ones are room temperature lacto-fermentation (they use constant 28C for theirs), high temperature (60C) 'blackening' process (eg black garlic) both of which are in 'sealed' containers and koji, miso, shoyu collection which require some form of humidity control.
I don't see a problem (do you?) in using Fermentrack as is for the low and high temperature fermentation processes, sizing the heating might take a bit of testing. I don't know enough about the electronics to know whether it would be easy to adapt the software to read say an AM2302 or dedicated humidity probe.
It would be nice to change some of the labels in the dashboard to make if more generic fermentation terms which I assume would be reasonably easy but not essential for me.
There are a small number of different processes outlined, the 3 main ones are room temperature lacto-fermentation (they use constant 28C for theirs), high temperature (60C) 'blackening' process (eg black garlic) both of which are in 'sealed' containers and koji, miso, shoyu collection which require some form of humidity control.
I don't see a problem (do you?) in using Fermentrack as is for the low and high temperature fermentation processes, sizing the heating might take a bit of testing. I don't know enough about the electronics to know whether it would be easy to adapt the software to read say an AM2302 or dedicated humidity probe.
It would be nice to change some of the labels in the dashboard to make if more generic fermentation terms which I assume would be reasonably easy but not essential for me.
How does the humidity control work? Do you have both a humidifer and dehumidifier working to maintain a constant humidity? What controller are you using for that?
Bigdaddyale
Well-Known Member
TonyB
Member
The book suggests a small room humidifier with simple mains on/off control so likely to be limited control but the humidity sensors also have limited accuracy.
Unfortunately, were I to guess, I'd say that it's most likely a bad sensor. Do you have another sensor you can swap for it & try?
Major Update
I just pushed a new release of Fermentrack to the 'dev' branch (and released the bugfixes from last week to "master"). The new release on "dev" includes preliminary support for pushing Fermentrack data out to external services, as well as a bunch of smaller bugfixes and other tweaks.
Now - for a major update - this post is going to be pretty thin. If the thought of "external push support" is the kind of thing that sparks excitement for you, then you're probably a developer. If that is the case, then the docs you want are here, and I've also created a sample app for you to check out that takes the data from Fermentrack and logs it here.
For everyone else, this is one of those things that (hopefully) will be more useful as additional support is implemented. If you have any apps (other than BrewersFriend - already working on that one) that you would like support for, feel free to post them here or ping me!
I just pushed a new release of Fermentrack to the 'dev' branch (and released the bugfixes from last week to "master"). The new release on "dev" includes preliminary support for pushing Fermentrack data out to external services, as well as a bunch of smaller bugfixes and other tweaks.
Now - for a major update - this post is going to be pretty thin. If the thought of "external push support" is the kind of thing that sparks excitement for you, then you're probably a developer. If that is the case, then the docs you want are here, and I've also created a sample app for you to check out that takes the data from Fermentrack and logs it here.
For everyone else, this is one of those things that (hopefully) will be more useful as additional support is implemented. If you have any apps (other than BrewersFriend - already working on that one) that you would like support for, feel free to post them here or ping me!
Do you have a pull-up resistor on the One-Wire data line?
If you do, remove one of the two working sensors and install the third one and see if it works. If it doesn't it's either a bad sensor or perhaps you got a DS18B20PAR sensor...
Cheers!
I also tried every-which-way to clean up the Graph through the Legend, by doing everything except shooting at my Monitor, to get rid of some unused Graph Temps.
Did anyone figure this one out yet?
Also, is there a way to use some sort of "Range Extender" for the TILT? I'm getting "Currently Unbound" under the Device, Gravity Sensors list. Like what I use for my Router, Range Extenders placed throughout the house. I can not get any readings out of my stainless steel Conicals unless I sit my Note Pad computer next to it with the App. The Fermentrack n BrewPi Legacy Remix, are both about 30 feet away from the Fermenters.
CadiBrewer
Well-Known Member
I just pulled up Fermentrack on my laptop to try cleaning up one of my graphs. I click on the symbol and the line associated with that symbol disappears on the graph and the graph redraws itself to a new scale. The symbol and label stay on the legend, but the line on the graph goes away. Click on the colored symbol, not the label name.
I had the same problem with the Tilt not being picked up from more than a foot or two when inside my conical inside the fridge. I ended up putting my raspberry pi on top of the fridge and it works well.
Thanks CadiBrewer! I be damned....I clicked (I thought) everything in the Legend....Well I guess I did NOT click just the color symbol. There is no change of your pointer to an editing mode, so easy to miss what to click on.
My Brewery was designed, with LOTS of work, to hide every freeking wire, so my Pi's are at my work station, 30 feet away, and the low and high voltage signal and power wires are through the walls and over to my Conicals. I really don't want to abandon my "hidden" wires and place the Pi on the Coni......UGH! What a Brewer's Dilemma!
WOW, Look what a recent Google search can do!...if I did it. I just did not see anything out there months ago when I did... to Repeat the signal until your post! So, why wait? To let "Them" get the Bugs out? I see its in Beta now.
Thanks for the GREAT Fermentrack, Thorrak! Your making a LOT more better beer out there, by us outsiders!
Thanks for the GREAT Fermentrack, Thorrak! Your making a LOT more better beer out there, by us outsiders!
I mean, they announced the project what - a week and a half ago?
As far as my suggestion to wait, I've been working on a repeater of my own, but every time I've picked the project up there's been some "showstopping" bug with the hardware it's based on which has prevented its completion. The latest "showstopper" just happened to be squished on February 14th, and as a result it now feels like that project can be shepherded through to completion. I've been proven wrong (repeatedly) however, so no guarantees until it's released -- but I'm feeling a lot more hopeful at the moment than I have been in the past!
If one could snarf Tilt Bluetooth beacon packets could they simply slam them via wifi lan to their final destination directly and skip the whole phone thing?
How will Fermentrack grab the Tilt data? From an interweb host, or directly from the device, or from a phone app, or...?
Cheers!
How will Fermentrack grab the Tilt data? From an interweb host, or directly from the device, or from a phone app, or...?
Cheers!
Exactly.
Thank you for your hard work, it is appreciated!
I picked up a Pi 3A+ for my dual chamber fermentation cabinet and was going to prototype something in nodered when someone in my beer club mentioned Fermentrack.
I am waiting for the sensors and other bits to be delivered so I thought I would start to figure out the software which brought me here.
I have fermentrack running nicely via your slick install script!
I also have fuscus running but I noticed when trying to install a fuscus device that its not yet supported.
How do they interface with each other, TCP?
Perhaps I should be asking @ame in the fuscus thread?
I have coding experience and am fairly handy with linux and such and am hopeful I can get this running without having to buy a dedicated controller.
Cheers,
Jon
I picked up a Pi 3A+ for my dual chamber fermentation cabinet and was going to prototype something in nodered when someone in my beer club mentioned Fermentrack.
I am waiting for the sensors and other bits to be delivered so I thought I would start to figure out the software which brought me here.
I have fermentrack running nicely via your slick install script!
I also have fuscus running but I noticed when trying to install a fuscus device that its not yet supported.
And then I noticed this post from you:
Is there a hint on how to configure fuscus to work with fermentrack?
How do they interface with each other, TCP?
Perhaps I should be asking @ame in the fuscus thread?
I have coding experience and am fairly handy with linux and such and am hopeful I can get this running without having to buy a dedicated controller.
Cheers,
Jon
With your experience, you should be fine. Get Fuscus set up according to @ame 's instructions on the same user as your Fermentrack install, and it will generate a file-based socket that you can connect to. Then, just use the "advanced" device setup workflow in Fermentrack, select "Board Type: Arduino Uno", leave the "Connect Interface to Script" options alone, and adjust the "Connect Script to Device" to the following:
Connection Type: Serial
Serial port: <path to your socket>
Serial alt port: Leave as None
Untick "Prefer connecting via udev"
As you already have Fuscus running you're already aware, but for anyone else who reads this - One of the biggest things to be aware of with Fuscus is that the Fuscus workflow doesn't allow for temperature sensors/relay pins/etc. to be configured on the fly -- they have to be set up using a .ini file in the Fuscus folder.
If you have any issues whatsoever getting it to work, shoot me a PM and I'll help debug. Fuscus is a fantastic project, and is the reason that I started tinkering with BrewPi in the first place!
(Also, once you get it working, I'll get this added to the docs for anyone in the future. Sorry to make you search!)
Well that was a lot easier than I thought! Thanks for the detailed instructions!
I logged in as fermentrack and installed fuscus skipping creating the fuscus user.
Then logged in as pi and navigated to the fuscus.ini under the fermentrack user and added the temp sensor addresses into the sample ini, etc.
In fermentrack I set the serial port path to the default path to fuscus (/dev/fuscus) as per your instructions above.
I ran the fuscus script then logged into fermentrack, added the device as per your instructions, set up a test beer and voila
There seems to be a precision issue but that should be easy.
More to come once I get some more time...
Thanks again!
Cheers,
Jon
I logged in as fermentrack and installed fuscus skipping creating the fuscus user.
Then logged in as pi and navigated to the fuscus.ini under the fermentrack user and added the temp sensor addresses into the sample ini, etc.
In fermentrack I set the serial port path to the default path to fuscus (/dev/fuscus) as per your instructions above.
I ran the fuscus script then logged into fermentrack, added the device as per your instructions, set up a test beer and voila
There seems to be a precision issue but that should be easy.
More to come once I get some more time...
Thanks again!
Cheers,
Jon
I ran the fuscus script then logged into fermentrack, added the device as per your instructions, set up a test beer and voila
There seems to be a precision issue but that should be easy.
That sounds/looks like a bug - but at least its an easily squished one. I'll try to get a fix in this weekend.
Yep, GPIO4 is what you needed -- good guess! Here's the build schematic for Fuscus if there's anything else you need to hook up!
rocketpants
Member
Hi all,
great app @Thorrak The guys at my home brew club were talking about it last week and raving and, as I've had the last few days sick from work I thought I'd give it a spin. I've been running brewpi with arduino for years and it has been great and very reliable but the lack of any future updates updates always bugged me. I simply pulled out a spare pi, installed stretch and ran the fermentrack install command and a short while later all done.
I then swapped the brew pi rapbpi for the fermentrack and the system was up and running in minutes. Adding the arduino device was simple and didn't give me any trouble what o ever. I even pulled out my "on hold" iSpindel project and have got that talking (but now need to finish the project).
I've a few queries and comments
Cheers
great app @Thorrak The guys at my home brew club were talking about it last week and raving and, as I've had the last few days sick from work I thought I'd give it a spin. I've been running brewpi with arduino for years and it has been great and very reliable but the lack of any future updates updates always bugged me. I simply pulled out a spare pi, installed stretch and ran the fermentrack install command and a short while later all done.
I then swapped the brew pi rapbpi for the fermentrack and the system was up and running in minutes. Adding the arduino device was simple and didn't give me any trouble what o ever. I even pulled out my "on hold" iSpindel project and have got that talking (but now need to finish the project).
I've a few queries and comments
- Is there any way to refresh the graphs on the dashboard without refreshing the whole page. This would be great so it could remember which of the charts you have turned on and off and not have to go through the process of turning them on and off again
- On the graph again would it be possible to suppress zero temperature values for set points for beer and fridge when fridge and beer control are selected. Having these shown elongates the graph making it more difficult to read
- Like others a "where am I up to in the ferment profile" would be great
Cheers
Hey @rocketpants - glad you like it!
There currently is not any caching of which graph lines are enabled/disabled, unfortunately. This may come at a later date, however, as you’re not the first person to request it.
Suppressing 0s is similarly complicated as they’re technically valid in the sense that they’re present in the data set. When you’re logging, a log point is recorded every few seconds containing every column theoretically available - including columns for sensors you don’t have connected. Was I better with DyGraphs, I would prefer to split each sensor into its own CSV and have DyGraphs recombine them — if anyone out there wants to take a stab at this and submit a pull request, please do so.
“Where am I in my profile” is definitely coming. Probably not in the next few weeks, but soon.
There currently is not any caching of which graph lines are enabled/disabled, unfortunately. This may come at a later date, however, as you’re not the first person to request it.
Suppressing 0s is similarly complicated as they’re technically valid in the sense that they’re present in the data set. When you’re logging, a log point is recorded every few seconds containing every column theoretically available - including columns for sensors you don’t have connected. Was I better with DyGraphs, I would prefer to split each sensor into its own CSV and have DyGraphs recombine them — if anyone out there wants to take a stab at this and submit a pull request, please do so.
“Where am I in my profile” is definitely coming. Probably not in the next few weeks, but soon.
Hello everyone! Working on installing Fermentrack for the first time, on a Raspberry Pi 3, fresh install of Raspian, WiFi enabled, everything seems ok. In Raspian's terminal I entered curl -L install.fermentrack.com | sudo bash, and got this error below. I tried running updates with sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade, and rebooted the Pi, same error every time. I have my Arduino hooked up, not sure if this makes a difference or not at this step. Hoping someone knows what I can try next to get this working.
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 123 100 123 0 0 670 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 672
100 7041 100 7041 0 0 15159 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 15159
::: This script was launched as root. Continuing installation.
::: Verifying free disk space...
::: Installing dependencies using apt-get
::: 'apt-key update' ran successfully.
::: apt is updated - installing git-core and build-essential.
::: (This may take a few minutes during which everything will be silent)
*** ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ***
----------------------------------
See above lines for error message
Setup NOT completed
I tried running updates with sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade, and rebooted the Pi, same error every time. I have my Arduino hooked up, not sure if this makes a difference or not at this step.
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 123 100 123 0 0 670 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 672
100 7041 100 7041 0 0 15159 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 15159
::: This script was launched as root. Continuing installation.
::: Verifying free disk space...
::: Installing dependencies using apt-get
::: 'apt-key update' ran successfully.
::: apt is updated - installing git-core and build-essential.
::: (This may take a few minutes during which everything will be silent)
*** ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ***
----------------------------------
See above lines for error message
Setup NOT completed
I tried running updates with sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade, and rebooted the Pi, same error every time. I have my Arduino hooked up, not sure if this makes a difference or not at this step.
Try running:
sudo apt-get install git-core build-essential
And report back as to what it says.
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
build-essential is already the newest version (12.3).
You might want to run 'apt --fix-broken install' to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
apt-utils : Depends: apt (= 1.4.8) but 1.4.9 is to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt --fix-broken install' with no packages (or specify a solution).
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
build-essential is already the newest version (12.3).
You might want to run 'apt --fix-broken install' to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
apt-utils : Depends: apt (= 1.4.8) but 1.4.9 is to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt --fix-broken install' with no packages (or specify a solution).
Heh. Apt broke because it wants to update apt. How... i’ll skip the obvious pun.
Did you try running apt —fix-broken install ?
Did you try running apt —fix-broken install ?
Ran sudo apt --fix-broken install and it worked, auto Fermentrack install complete! Thank you!
