Tracking temperature and gravity without a controller

[gelkayam]

Hi there,
I got an iSpindel and was looking for a service that I can send the data to, so I can graph the results.
After updating the firmware, I saw BierBot and decided to give it a try.

I configured the iSpindel as a brick, getting info from it every 15 minutes (I understand that the server makes the iSpindel set the interval), and created a fermenter equipment, setting it with the sensors from the iSpindel.
When looking at the Manual screen, I see a single dot, but not a graph. if I hit the reset button on the iSpindel, it sends another beacon, and then I see something on the graph, but when letting it run normally, closed inside the fermenter, only one dot appears.
When trying to run in Automatic, a recipe which has a fermentation step, although I have a fermenter, it doesn't let me choose it, so all I can do after "starting the brew", is to wrapup / finish.

What am I doing wrong? should I be able to just see the graphs?

BTW, I see a link to this forum and to the discussion page on github. is this the right forum?

Thanks,
Guy.

[gelkayam]

I was able to move another step, by faking the brick using curl.
for i in {1..10}; do curl -i 'https://brewbricks.com/api/iot/v1?type= ... y=xxxxxxxx' ; sleep 120; done

this fakes an active sonof, but stuck on "Waiting for Fermenter to get ready..." when trying to start an automatic brew with only the fermenter.

Am I doing it right?

[Bernhard]

Hey there,

some notes which may be helpfull for understanding what's going on.

1. what you describe sounds perfect to me, so no (obvious) error on your side based on what you wrote.
2. manual screen only displays the last couple of minutes. If a datapoint is only generated every 15 min (like it's the case with the iSpindel) there will be just one datapoint.
3. I assume: You've used the fermenter in a automatic test run and tried to immediately do another test. Sometimes it takes a couple of seconds before the device is "freed" again and ready for the next automatic process. Can you confirm?
4. When you are able to select the fermenter and start the brew two processes run in the background: First setting up your brew, second: the brew waits for its first datapoint. If you're only using an iSpindel and not some sort of BierBot Brick to control your fridge (or fermenter, etc..) this can take up to 15min. But it should start after that.
5. You assumed correctly: Adding a "mocked" BierBot Brick to your fermenter can mititage the long waiting time as described in point 4.
6. Communication channel: Forum works, Github works, too. But if you have a Github account maybe consider giving one of the BierBot Bricks repos a Star ?

Let me know if you still think you discovered a bug! Regarding #4: I've added it to the backlog, the UX is admittedly suboptimal there.

Cheers,
Bernhard.

[gelkayam]

Hi Bernhard,
Thanks for your reply, last thing first, starred BernhardSchlegel/BierBot-Bricks. is that the correct repo? that's the endpoint over sonoff, right?

3. I think that's not the case. I had only the iSpindel in the equipment, and it seems the fermenter cannot be chosen as the in the fermentation step with no brick. It might be by design, and then (if product plan fits) I create a feature request to all "Monitor mode" which doesn't control the temperature in the fermenter, just reads the data off the sensors. anyway I worked around it with the API call to have a fake TH16.
4. Yes, took some time, but started. An enhancement that can be done, is to take the last known reading. users can opt-in if you like, and get a more responsive experience.
5. Without a mock brick, I was not able to start the Automatic at all. Please consider allowing adding a mock/null/manual/offline brick in the bricks -> add brick screen.

Anyway, kudos on building the service, I understand that the Frontend and backend repos are not public (Yet?), but when they will be, I would be happy to read them and/or create some contribution PRs.

PS.
I'm currently running a fermentation, and getting the temperature graph, but the gravity graph is a bit weird, does the backend reject "strange" data-points? currently my uncalibrated iSpindel is reporting 0.6597SG.

Best Regards and brew on,
Guy.

[Bernhard]

Hey Guy,

thanks correct. That's the (old) ESP2866 based Sonoff. There is also a repo for it's ESP32 / 20A capable successor and a client for Python/ RaspberryPi - but no need to star all of them

Happy to report back: I was able to start an Fermenter with its only interfaces being the temperature and gravity sensor from an iSpindel. The questions remains why It didn't work for you. Maybe try creating a vanilla fermenter, resetting the interfaces of your iSpindel and re-assigning everything.

But: Maybe you tell me when you're tracking is finished and leave everything "as is" so I can inspect what went wrong?

I keep your willingness to contribute in the back of my head- thanks in advance!

Depending on your iSpindel your iSpindel might transmit SG or °P - you can configure what our backend expects on the Bricks page under the settings of your iSpindel. Fun fact: you can even set the polynom there: In that case our backend caclucates the SG based on the tilt angle and ignores the transmitted SG value.

Cheers,
Bernhard.

[olibrius]

Hi Bernhard & Gelkayam,

I was running into the same issue with the iSpindel (firmware 7.2.1)

I understood that I cannot select the fermenter because it was already activated in "MANUAL" mode.

If I disable it there, I can use it for an automatic brew

Hope this helps,

Cheers

[Bernhard]

Hi Bernhard & Gelkayam,

I was running into the same issue with the iSpindel (firmware 7.2.1)

I understood that I cannot select the fermenter because it was already activated in "MANUAL" mode.

If I disable it there, I can use it for an automatic brew

Hope this helps,

Cheers

Thanks for letting us know! It would probably make more sense to have a warning displayed "If you select this fermenter for an Automatic Brew Manual control will be disabled" - but still letting you select it. On the (way too long) list!

Thanks,
Bernhard.

[olibrius]

Thanks for letting us know! It would probably make more sense to have a warning displayed "If you select this fermenter for an Automatic Brew Manual control will be disabled" - but still letting you select it. On the (way too long) list!

Yeah, a UX friendly way to do it would be to display it but "grayed out" with a text like "already selected in manual mode" or something like this.
When a automatic brew is started, it then appears with a lock in "manual" which is explicit enough

Thanks for the great work,
I'm dry hopping my first brew on your platform at the moment and I love it :p

Max

[gelkayam]

same setup as before, choosing the equipment is unavailable.
I have a fake controller, but it haven't checked in in some time.

only option under fermentation is "skip recipe step"

[Bernhard]

Hey Guy,

sorry to hear that. I'm still having issues to replicate your issue:

Fermenter setup

fermenter.png (38.56 KiB) Viewed 4026 times

Fermenter is selectable:

start_brew.png (43.15 KiB) Viewed 4026 times

Can you ping me on a channel of your choice when the issue is present the next time and "let the issue" be (like not doing anything).

Cheers,
Bernhard.