ISpindel

[GeoffB]

Hi
I've only just started using the app so apologies if I'm missing something.
TL;DR ispindel temp records frequently but SG only recorded once.

I added an ispindel following the instructions and created a dummy brew to check things out. I'll be making simple kit cider first so I set the boiling duration to zero and as hoped when I chose automatic it skipped over it and straight into fermentation.
After a couple of hours there's a nice temperature graph but only one measurement for SG of "1.0". I have the ispindel sitting in a jug of sugar water so I'd expect 1.020 or something like that.
Any thoughts?

Screenshot_20220506-004447.png (153.74 KiB) Viewed 4158 times

[Bernhard]

Hi GeoffB,

welcome aboard! "It's a feature not a bug"

1. Values are recorded "on change". Which means, that if the iSpindel is sitting in water (and the value does not change), no new SG reading will be recorded. Change the tilt a little and a new reading should appear after the next logging interval.
2. The SG being 1 when the iSpindel is in water means your iSpindel is perfectly calibrated. Water should have an SG of 1 by definition. Congrats on the perfect calibration

Cheers,
Bernhard.

[GeoffB]

Thanks Bernhard

I understand now and that makes absolute sense but I still suspect something isn't right. The iSpindel is in a light sugar solution which was around 1.025 SG on my refractometer. I've diluted with water so it's around 1.022 and waited over 10 minutes, which is the frequency I set in iSpindel. When I download my one piece of gravity data it's exactly 1. Is it possible you're rounding for Plato not SG? I chose SG in the settings but again, I'm new here

In my case temperature changed at 9:25am so that's the last recording. Obviously it makes sense not to store a whole bunch of identical data points but I can see some minor issues.
I would like to see the graph show an imaginary data point at the "last received value time". It would mean storing the timestamp of the last communication. That would then also show me that my iSpindel is alive without having to wait.
The graph widget for SG may use an automatic scale? Will it narrow when it gets a second data point?

iSpindel is fairly useless (slow) at measuring temperature, I presume I can drag temperature into the fermenter from my brick instead of iSpindel when I assemble it?

Sorry about the long winded post Bernhard, I really like the app, I'd been playing around with Brewfather for a while but there's an information overload when for the most part I need to know about the temperature and SG of what's fermenting with historical data for that. I've ordered a SONOFF and looking forward to replacing my Inkbird.

Geoff

[Bernhard]

Hi Geoff,

you might be actually running into a bug that was fixed a while ago on the iSpindle firmware side of things. This bug caused the SG transmitted by the iSpindle be rounded to 1 decimal (1.0 pretty much always). In this case, you can either
1. upgrade your iSpindel to the most recent firmware or
2. configure the iSpindel so that it transmits the gravity reading in °P and adjust the setting of your iSpindel Brick that °P is received. This won't affect how it's displayed in the UI (the graphs) to you as this is solely dependent on the unit you set in YOUR settings.

Showing you the "last contact" pseudo element can be misleading. I.e. an iSpindel and a Brick can be mapped to a fermenter at the same time (both providing temperatures, which will cause the temperature to be averaged). If you want to know the last communication, simply head over to the "Bricks" section.

Regarding "scaling": In Automatic, you can set how much history you want to see (all, 7-3-1 days, ... 10 minutes). If there are less then 10 datapoints left by the set filter, all datapoints will be displayed.

Yep, you can. You can either combine them (then they will be averaged) or just use the temperature reading from the sonoff.

Please let me know, if you were able to get any other SG reading than 1!

Cheers,
Bernhard.

[GeoffB]

Hi Bernhard

It's using 7.1.4 which is the latest I could find on github.
If I use it in Ubidots I can see a difference in values of up to 6 decimal places and in Beerfather I see 3 DP's so it's definitely capable of sending with plenty of precision. I calibrated it myself using Ubidots so I know it can send between 1.000 and 1.085 at least.
I had to reconfigure it back to Beerfather settings last night as I started a new batch of cider but it looks like when I did, it captured a second gravity value of exactly 1.1 which I'm thinking was the iSpindel horizontal on my desk. (Screenshot attached).
Are you certain you're not rounding SG to one DP?
In Beerfather I have to change the name/SSID of the ispindel to include "[SG]" to tell the software I'm outputting SG not Plato. In Bricks I assume that's all done by the config setting.

I can't enter a manually logged SG value unless it's to one DP. If I try and enter 1.0123 for example and mouseover the value, it says the nearest valid values are 1 and 1.1 and doesn't record it.

Point taken on the last contact thing, I hadn't noticed that the last seen time was there.
The scaling makes absolute sense, it was just difficult to understand with only one lonely data point

Geoff

[Bernhard]

Hi GeoffB,

so my Pull Request fixing the Bug in the iSpindel was merged on Feb 4th 2022. The latest release 7.1.4. was released Oct 24, 2021. So even if you have the current Release, this does not include the bugfix. I'll reach out to Samuel, when a new release is scheduled.

So two options for you:
- Transmit the gravity in °P to our backend (rounding to 1 decimals won't hurt you)
- Downloading the iSpindel repository and flashing the code instead of the precompiled release 7.1.4. binary.

Cheers,
Bernhard.

[Bernhard]

Hi Geoff,

me again. If you have a GitHub Account, you can vote for the issue I've just created in this matter by simply giving it a thumbs up.

https://github.com/universam1/iSpindel/issues/582

Cheers,
Bernhard.

[GeoffB]

Ah, my apologies Bernhard, I didn't realise this was a fix waiting to be released.
Of course that's exactly the issue, sorry for wasting your time.
I'll thumbs up your new issue.

Geoff

[Bernhard]

Hi Geoff,

Please don't worry. I just came to realize that myself. Didn't know that there was no release since then...

Happy brewing,
Bernhard.