HOWTO - Make a BrewPi Fermentation Controller For Cheap

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A thought then. Check your pc's and phones to see if you have any tabs open where you might have brought up a brewpi page before in the past.
 
photobru said:
[...]I also picked up a Grove serial LCD display and I'm not sure how to go about getting it to work with BrewPi. I'm new to Arduino, but I did a search and couldn't find anything on using this type of display with BrewPi, and since it only has 4 wires, GND, VCC, RX, and TX, it seems like I'll have to code it myself. I'm wondering if that will be possible using either the Arduino scripting language or Python? I'm not a programmer so that's all I can code in.
Click to expand...

You're definitely on your own on that one. I'm pretty sure you would need to install the full Atmel Studio suite to be able to code up and compile the additional/replacement module needed to enable a secondary serial port to drive the display and the code to translate the transaction set to run it...

Cheers!
 
Thanks. I may do a reboot and see if that fixes it. It's fine until it needs to change temp and it worked fine until it started to drop fit the lagering phase. .I did modify the profile part way through due to reaching fg sooner than expected.
 
day_trippr said:
You're definitely on your own on that one. I'm pretty sure you would need to install the full Atmel Studio suite to be able to code up and compile the additional/replacement module needed to enable a secondary serial port to drive the display and the code to translate the transaction set to run it...

Cheers!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I did a little more research and decided I was in way over my head so I'm using an old laptop with Debian just to keep things neat and I'm going to play around with the Raspberry Pi for fun. Thanks though!
 
Looking for help...I've followed the diagram on the first page and have the temp probes working. However, I can not get the electrical outlet to actually switch on or off.

I have a PC power cord that has a blue, brown (tan?), and green w/ yellow stripe wire coming of it.

-I wired the the blue wire to the left side in place of the white wire you see in the diagram.

- I wired the green w/ yellow wire to the bottom left side in place of the green wire you see in the diagram

- I ran two wires (red in the diagram) from the right side of the outlet to to the corresponding spot on the SSR as shown in the diagram

- I wired the brown/tan wire (black in the diagram) to the corresponding spot on the SSR as show in the diagram

- I broke the tab on the right side

Questions/Observations
---
- Do i need to break the tab on both sides of the outlet?
- When I set BrewPi to Heat, IN1 light comes on, on the SSR
- When I set BrewPi to Cool, IN2 light does not come on, on the SSR
 
corypedia said:
Looking for help...I've followed the diagram on the first page and have the temp probes working. However, I can not get the electrical outlet to actually switch on or off.

I have a PC power cord that has a blue, brown (tan?), and green w/ yellow stripe wire coming of it.

-I wired the the blue wire to the left side in place of the white wire you see in the diagram.

- I wired the green w/ yellow wire to the bottom left side in place of the green wire you see in the diagram

- I ran two wires (red in the diagram) from the right side of the outlet to to the corresponding spot on the SSR as shown in the diagram

- I wired the brown/tan wire (black in the diagram) to the corresponding spot on the SSR as show in the diagram

- I broke the tab on the right side

Questions/Observations
---
- Do i need to break the tab on both sides of the outlet?
- When I set BrewPi to Heat, IN1 light comes on, on the SSR
- When I set BrewPi to Cool, IN2 light does not come on, on the SSR
Click to expand...

I have a similar problem as my indicator lights illuminate, but I never hear the relay click. I have no power at the outlets either.

I am using a Raspberry Pi 2. Everything else is working as expected, but that one vital piece :) .
 
You need to make sure that the relay gets power from the 5v pin on the arduino if it doesn't the lights will still switch but the relay won't. As for the cold light not coming on that would seem to suggest that pin between the relay and the arduino that is linked to cold isn't connected properly or assigned correctly in the brewpi interface.
 
Also photos of your set up will help people to see if the wiring is all ok
 
smh...i checked and rechecked and rechecked. both the 5v and in2 pins where shifted one spot on the board. all is well!

thanks!
 
has anyone wired this up using the pc cord as the source for their raspberry pi too? this would avoid the need to plug in both the raspberry pi and the electrical outlets.
 
I just did something similar, I decided to use a separate ac adapter for my Arduino instead of powering it through the USB. You still need to use the adapter for the Pi or you'll fry it (and possibly yourself). What I did was wire an extension cord outlet coming off the hot and neutral wires of the pc cord and then plugged my ac adapter into that and bundled it inside the project enclosure with everything else. I'll try to get a pic posted of the wiring. Don't try this unless you know what you're doing.
 
Here's the original wiring diagram with the new outlet added. It's basically just an extra unswitched outlet that you can stuff inside your enclosure with the adapter to keep things neat.

BrewPiArduinoCircuit copy.jpg
 
thanks for the diagram...but are you saying i can't plug the pi into the a/c adapter in your diagram?

I want to do what you are suggesting but plug in the raspberry pi's plug into the a/c adapter.
 
There is no ac adapter in the diagram. I think what you're calling the Raspberry Pi's plug might actually be the ac adapter. If you don't understand the circuit or know exactly what you're doing I'd recommend against attempting any modifications.
 
photobru said:
Here's the original wiring diagram with the new outlet added. It's basically just an extra unswitched outlet that you can stuff inside your enclosure with the adapter to keep things neat.
Click to expand...


Have you effectively changed a two way wall wart into a three way with the third one not connected to the relay and therefore not controlled by the arduino/brewpi

So it's really only necessary if you don't have enough wall warts to power the pi/fridge/Heater
 
photobru said:
There is no ac adapter in the diagram. I think what you're calling the Raspberry Pi's plug might actually be the ac adapter. If you don't understand the circuit or know exactly what you're doing I'd recommend against attempting any modifications.
Click to expand...

I said a/c adapter because i saw that in the diagram you drew and thought that's what you labeled it as.

So what I want to know is, can i use the female end of a plug, wire it up to the PC cord, unswitched, and hook up the raspberry Pi's adapter to the female plug?

The simple answer seems to be yes, but you mentioned not to plug the Pi into it and that you use it for the Arduino. I'd prefer to power the Pi via the PC cord to female plug and power the Arduino via the Pi USB port.
 
I can say, after going all bluetooth with my minions, that to avoid power issues in the future, powering the arduino independently is the way to go. With the BT dongle connecting to multiple minions I've had some issues (some related to bad usb cables) with getting new arduinos programmed over usb because of poor power conditions. But I also use the cheapest arduinos I can find.
 
Got a problem folks.

I had my pi working (out the box) everything done and ready to go, I then disassembled and reassemble it into a junction box.

Now I have rebooted the Pi and brewpi is prompting me to flash the Ardunio again.

I try to flash it with the same script file as before and I the flash fails due to not recognizing the version on the Uno

I check that Ardunio is installed by re-running the install script. Its 100% installed.

I have flashed the Uno in Ardinuo IDE with a bare minimum sketch (setup/loop) and then rebooted.

Its hasn't worked. Not sure what to do.
 
yeah basically. I changed the probes to 3 meter ones as well.
 
fixed it. Just had to clear the clear EEPROM. It would seem some copy Uno's go a bit dodgy when disconnected from the PI.
 
ubermick said:
I designed it (well, was able to get the EPS files from the guy who did the official BrewPi case so used his joining system), and then had a company here in the Bay Area laser it out. Was actually not that expensive, an enclosure the same size would have been around $25, and this was just $10 more (since I was able to go pick it up) and would have had to cut everything out myself (in otherwords, hack the everloving crap out of a plastic box!)
Click to expand...

Would you mind sharing your design files?
 
Is there anyway to have the brewpi (or I guess raspberry pi) automatically connect to wifi when you turn it on so you don't need a monitor close by?
 
You can just set it up how you normally would and then unplug the keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and as long as it's working properly you'll be able to access it remotely. For wifi you'll just need a USB wifi dongle, which is incredibly easy to configure on the Pi.

EDIT: if you meant to just be able to plug the Raspberry Pi in and then have it automatically do its thing and log into brewpi, I think it's possible, you'd probably have to remove your login password and then you'd need to write some scripts to launch brewpi from terminal on startup.
 
Your best bet is to configure your router to reserve a static I.P. for the raspberry pi.

You'll then need to edit the interfaces file on the pi to use wlan by default. The "setting up WiFi access" directions on the brewpi site lay it out pretty well.

Edited to change the reference to router rather than modem.
 
Hello everyone. This is my first post so sorry if it sounds dumb. I'm just about to take my leap into the wonderful world of homebrew but I have a quick question. I bought a freezer to turn into a keezer. I have no need to ferment in it just yet, but I do own a Raspberry Pi and I also need a way to control the temperature of the freezer for the keg. Would I be able to use brewpi to do this? or would I better off buying a separate device to control the temp in the freezer? (I'm trying to save money and can't seem to find one below $50 or so)

Thank you and sorry if this is in the wrong place!
 
Sorry if this question was already asked but how many amps do you need for this? I have a 750mA Nokia phone charge.

The problem I'm running into is that even after getting all the software running I plug in the arduino it does not power. I can't figure out if it is because 750mA is not enough or it is something else I'm doing wrong. If I unplug the arduino from the relay board (all the wiring) and it's just the arduino it will show power. As soon as I plug everything back in the way it is shown on the drawing it will not power.

I'm also having problems with programming the arduino. I followed the instructions on the link provided but the only serial port I get is ttyAMA0. Which it says can not be the correct one because that is the internal serial port.

Any help I could get would be greatly appreciated! I want to have this up and running by Friday so I can test it out Friday night and Saturday to brew on Sunday.
 
clubfed11 said:
Hello everyone. This is my first post so sorry if it sounds dumb. I'm just about to take my leap into the wonderful world of homebrew but I have a quick question. I bought a freezer to turn into a keezer. I have no need to ferment in it just yet, but I do own a Raspberry Pi and I also need a way to control the temperature of the freezer for the keg. Would I be able to use brewpi to do this? or would I better off buying a separate device to control the temp in the freezer? (I'm trying to save money and can't seem to find one below $50 or so)

Thank you and sorry if this is in the wrong place!
Click to expand...


I use brewpi to do pretty much this on my second brew fridge it works perfectly, I believe you can also run raspberry pints and brewpi concurrently (with some tweaking the Apache) if you wanted to monitor your flow of beer.
 
Franky said:
Sorry if this question was already asked but how many amps do you need for this? I have a 750mA Nokia phone charge.



The problem I'm running into is that even after getting all the software running I plug in the arduino it does not power. I can't figure out if it is because 750mA is not enough or it is something else I'm doing wrong. If I unplug the arduino from the relay board (all the wiring) and it's just the arduino it will show power. As soon as I plug everything back in the way it is shown on the drawing it will not power.



I'm also having problems with programming the arduino. I followed the instructions on the link provided but the only serial port I get is ttyAMA0. Which it says can not be the correct one because that is the internal serial port.



Any help I could get would be greatly appreciated! I want to have this up and running by Friday so I can test it out Friday night and Saturday to brew on Sunday.
Click to expand...


I had a similar problem with a Chinese arduino the power seems to be flakey so try swapping USB cables. I

In terms of the TTYAMA0 I listed what I did over on the brewpi forum (and possibly in here as well). It worked for me but does involve changing a Config file via ssh so you'll need to be able to ssh into your pi. It's the last post here

https://community.brewpi.com/t/cannot-upload-hex-code-to-my-arduino/318/20

Cheers
 
Some Chinese arduinos will not show up in /dev if they are plugged in before you power up the pi.
 
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