Fermentrack on a RPI 4 w/ elegoo Uno r3....how to hook up the LCD

[RO0KlE]

Hey everyone. I've searched the forums and I have not found a good answer yet, so here goes. I have a RPI 4 and a elegoo Uno R3 with fermentrack set up. Everything is currently working fine. I want to attach an LCD to display the fermentrack info so I can see it at a glance. My set-up is pretty basic. The only pin I have in right now is A4 which is connected to the temp probes (thats how every diagram i could find for fermentrack showed it needed to be hooked up. So I went to amazon and bought a SunFounder IIC I2C with the 4 pin shield already attached. The only diagram I could find for how this gets hooked up was in this forum and it showed SLC -> A5 and SDA ->A4. and the sensor wire being moved to A0.

So here is where the problems start. When I hook it up this way I no longer get sensor readings in fermentrack. Additionally the LCD screen never powers on. I get a red glowing light in the back but the screen remains dead. I've tried leaving the sensor in A4 along with SDA and I will at least get sensor readings then, but the LCD screen still never turns on. I've googled my heart out trying to find a solution, and as of yet I can not.

If anyone can please help I would greatly appriciate it, my frustration with this is at the point where I'm ready to put it all in a box and toss it in the attic.

Bellow picture is what I found here (it says for brewpi not fermentrack but its the only thing I could find so far. (once again this setup did not function for me)

**I have completed multiple restarts, EPROM resets, and tried 2 different I2C LCD screens with no luck.

 

[day_trippr]

I believe this requires a different firmware load on the Arduino. Might check the repo's to see if anything jumps out, otherwise I'm sure @Thorrak will be along to help

Cheers!

 

[RO0KlE]

Thanks @day_trippr I’ll be standing by and hoping he can help out

 

[day_trippr]

Ah, hmm.....

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...-for-raspberry-pi.649303/page-32#post-8889172
Maybe Lee @LBussy can help, I'm pretty sure this has been solved before.

btw, that's the long running Fermentrack thread loaded with tons of info...

Cheers!

 

[LBussy]

Sorry, this got buried in my notifications.

This is BrewPi Remix, not Fermentrack. You may have used Fermentrack to flash the Uno firmware, but the firmware itself is BPR. BPR is a front end app as well as the firmware, Fermentrack is the front end only which will connect to BPR as well as his own ESP8266 firmware.

Clear as mud?

Anyway ...

@day_trippr hit on the solution. The I2C firmware is not interchangeable with the RevC firmware. You need to flash that version in order to use A4/5 for the I2C display and A0 for the sensors. I'm going to tap in @Thorrak here to tell you how to use Fermentrack to re-flash the firmware since I don't have a working Fermentrack here to try it on.

 

[RO0KlE]

Thanks for working on this guys, I really appreciate it

 

[RO0KlE]

Okay, update. I used a different firmware (i2c) and after flashing that firmware wiring everything they way that I showed in that picture I got the LCD to work. However I have a few new problems that I am hoping you guys can help me with. First, there is no back light???? How do I make the back light light up. Second question is the relays. When I preiviously the relays would load and they were very self explanitory. Now I get like 4 options and I have no clue which is which. Any help??

 

[Bigdaddyale]

Do you have a four relay module? There is a jumper on the back of the display that needs to be jumped for the backlight to function

 

[RO0KlE]

Okay I got the heat and cooling sorted. now I just have these two left, which I'm assuming that I do nothing with.

last thing I have is the back light. @Bigdaddyale I figured out the jumping of the two pins on back. How ever after a few minutes the LCD goes out and never comes back on. That's the thing I need to fix now. Once that's done I think I will be off and running.

**edit:
Back light comes on when I first start everything up, within a few minutes it goes back out. once it goes out I can never get it to restart.
@Thorrak or @LBussy
Am I supposed to be using the i2c legacy firmware or the most current? Just trying to figure out if that is part of my LCD back light problem

 

[day_trippr]

Most Arduino sketches that support BrewPi have a backlight time-out function, because the original code expects there's a rotary encoder switch extant as well. Rotating or pressing that switch wakes the backlight on all of my BrewPi systems.

Sans the switch, you may be able to hot-wire the backlight via the same 2-pin header sporting the jumper cap now. You'd have to check the specs specific to your display/LCD backpack...

Cheers!

 

[RO0KlE]

Is the rotary switch something I can buy on amazon? (if so can you drop me a link of what I need?)
also is the switch just wired in to the two pins on back?

@day_trippr thanks for the help, you and everyone else has been awesome

 

[LBussy]

@RO0KlE nobody minds helping, but you really will find faster help in the threads which support these two.:

• Fermentrack is here - this is where you go for the web application portion
• BrewPi Remix is here - this is where you go for help with the firmware. This thread is huge and morphed from the original (now "Legacy") BrewPi into BrewPi Remix.

If you don't have a rotary encoder, put a jumper between D7 and ground and reset the controller. When the firmware restarts it disables the backlight timeout feature if it sees D7 pulled low.

You can check here for information about the rotary encoder. I wull say that the links to PCBs.io should be ignored since that guy seems to be going out of business. You can download the *.brd files and use them anywhere. Oshpark is good and fast (but little more expensive). You don't need the breakouts, they just make it easier.