# The Beerbug - Digital Hydrometer



## randyrob

Saw this on Kickstarter, quite expensive but very interesting

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/parasi...er?ref=category

Rob.


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## slash22000

Been following this on Reddit. As long as they cost >$100 each it's really a market for royalty or Bill Gates only.


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## Charst

Looks pretty cool that you can track your temps and attenuation and compare the notes, 
but takes the pleasure out of taking a sample of fermenting wort and tasting how its progressing. 
Need more picks to see how the probe looks, ie cleanable, infection risks, and the same for the airlock connection.


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## tricache

Charst said:


> Looks pretty cool that you can track your temps and attenuation and compare the notes,
> but takes the pleasure out of taking a sample of fermenting wort and tasting how its progressing.
> Need more picks to see how the probe looks, ie cleanable, infection risks, and the same for the airlock connection.



Totally agree!! I love sampling my beer as its going and its actually a good way to see how things are going (good or bad)


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## bum

The diagram in the What's Next image show it should be fairly easy to clean/sanitise, Charst.

Looks like one of these might cause a fair problem in my brewfridge. Still, not really in the market for any gizmos right now.



slash22000 said:


> Been following this on Reddit. As long as they cost >$100 each it's really a market for royalty or Bill Gates only.


The page linked says how much they are. And you're right, they are >$100 each.


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## jayahhdee

While I like the idea, I think the price is a little high and wouldn't be throwing money at it until I see some reviews.


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## bum

You jumping on the API, Rob?


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## Jay Cee

Cool gadget, thanks for the link.


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## sydneyhappyhour

The cost is a little high but I can see it being pretty useful. Throw a RaspberryPi in to control your ferment fridge and you could have the two communicating about the progression of your brew over Wifi and adjusting the ambient temperature accordingly i.e lager diacetyl rests etc.


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## tricache

sydneyhappyhour said:


> The cost is a little high but I can see it being pretty useful. Throw a RaspberryPi in to control your ferment fridge and you could have the two communicating about the progression of your brew over Wifi and adjusting the ambient temperature accordingly i.e lager diacetyl rests etc.



Give it a year or so and we will just have a button and it will just say "Make Beer" and thats it!!


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## Liam_snorkel

tricache said:


> Give it a year or so and we will just have a button and it will just say "Make Beer" and thats it!!


combine a Braumeister with a WilliamsWarn and you'd be close. off you go!


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## tricache

Liam_snorkel said:


> combine a Braumeister with a WilliamsWarn and you'd be close. off you go!



Buying lotto ticket and selling kidney now


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## mfeighan

watched the video? not sure i want to put a big tampon in my wort


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## Jay Cee

The Williamswarn is the biggest load of overpriced bullshit on the market, At least the Brew Bug is practical AND within many brewers' budget. 

That said, I'll wait until the chinese knockoffs of the Brew Bug flood ebay for a quarter of the price :lol: Just kidding, if I can but it for under $100 after a year on the market, then I'm all over it.


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## DUANNE

looks like a great idea except i cant figure out how i would be able to use it with glad wrap and ive thrown all my fermenter lids in the bin.


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## Jay Cee

BEERHOG said:


> looks like a great idea except i cant figure out how i would be able to use it with glad wrap and ive thrown all my fermenter lids in the bin.




haha I considered this challenge also. I'll bet they didn't think of that.


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## Hippy

Damn fine little gadget. Almost worth getting the pineapple from swmbo for buying. Almost.


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## Zizzle

Interesting idea.

What sort of sensor is involved in measuring SG?


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## MHB

I suspect its just a load cell attached to a known mass, density is derived from buoyancy.
Should work but there is going to be some variance from CO2 bubbles and amount of CO2 in solution, a bit of basic coding should be able to compensate pretty well, especially as it is recording temperature as well.
Mark


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## Mr. No-Tip

Anyone got their's yet?

I got mine on Friday. Water test over 36 hours introduced some concerns. I kept taring to 0.0 and then finding it drop a point or two over the following hours. The beerbug folk suggested it was bubbles on the tap water.

Currently have a saison going. First reading seemed to be a few points over what my hydrometer suggested, but then dropped to a pretty close reading to my hydroeter OG within an hour or two. I noticed a big peak at 12 hours, presumably the krausen hit, but it dropped back over a few hours after that.

I watched a steady drop form 1.050 to 1.040 while I was at work today. I was surprised to see my high krausen already dropping off (not beerbug related clearly but interesting nonetheless) and have seen the gravity drop slow since then.

Temp wise, the beerbugs temp probe seems to lag 2 degrees behind my temp controller strapped to the side of the fermenter, both as I chilled to 20 after pitching, and as I've heated it since. When I up the temp (its a saison don't forget) I do notice these weird little last data point spikes as per the screenshot attached, they seem to match the heat in ambient, but then they never make it to the historical. (as in there were spikes that match that one in the screenshot at various points today)





After this beer finishes, I will recalibrate my temp controller and the beerbug against my thermapen.

Who else is playing with theirs?


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## djar007

I just ordered one mrnotip. How is this going for you a few months later. Any tips on how to best set it up.


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## durham70

I'd be interested in any feedback also as I've been thinking about one of these

Cheers


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## Mr. No-Tip

Unfortunately, mine is in a broken state.

The unit has some fishing wire (or similar) hanging down which connects to another piece of fishing wire on the torpedo via a keyring type thing.

The keyring type thing is wider than a fermenter airlock opening and takes some forcing to get in.

So for a tip...when you see your beer petering off after losing less than ten points and you take a hydrometer sample that suggests a drop of 20, and then you think maybe the torpedo needs a shake to loosen krausen, don't forget how short the length between the unit and the keyring is, because it will hit the airlock opening and pull down on the wire, ripping it out of the unit and dropping the torpedo in.

They have sent me instructions on how to redo it with fishing wire, but I just haven't had the time to do it. It's a very fiddly task.


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## djar007

Bloody hell. That sound like something I would do. Was it working ok for you before that. Is it a good buy do you think. Not that it matters now. Already have it on the way.


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## Mr. No-Tip

I think it's a decent product. It's exciting and fun to use. I was having some issues with how it read as fermentation slowed, but I screwed it before I got a chance to really determine if there was a fundamental problem with measurements.


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## djar007

Well. Mine arrived today. Easy to setup and use. Looks pretty well built. Flashing the thing with my phone was cool. The Android app was club key but I got it set up. I added it to a helles that has been fermenting for about a week and a half. Not hard to calibrate and install through the airlock. I added the airlock to it and it seals ok. I had to have a good look through my stuff just to find an airlock. But i had a few tucked away. Running a keg king temp controller through a thermo well to regulate temp. Very happy with it initially. Will post as I finish a few brews.


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## djar007

Update on the setup. I have this working wih my brewpi and it is working great. The battery is not as great as I would have hoped but its easy enough to recharge it in situ. I have been checking the gravity against my hydrometer and it is suprisingly accurate. I enjoy being able to login and change the fridge temps (brewpi function) according to the gravity. Very cool. Anyways here is a couple of screenshots.


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## Mardoo

Hmmm, that's nearly too cool to resist...


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## droid

damn!


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## MastersBrewery

Yep the only way to make it cooler, would be to add the gravity parameter to the PI and have it adjust temp per gravity. Like for a "d" rest or even crash chill


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## Mardoo

Go too close to AI and it'll ask for a drink


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## djar007

The beauty of this setup is that I can change it with a click on my phone or computer. I sort of know how my ferments are going to go. So setting a profile is easy. And if it has stalled or going quicker than usual it let's me change it.


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## Judanero

How much did it cost (total) to have it land here if you don't mind me asking?

Really trying to concentrate on my ferments a lot more and this with the raspberry pi is looking mighty tempting..


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## Jack'sTavern

i have the brewpi running. if you buy all of their hardware it will cost around $250 including pi, spark core, brewpi board, temp sensors, SSR's and shipping...

Elco, who is the brewpi guy, says that in the future he is looking to support a sensor for density/specific gravity.

You can get one at brewpi.com

the shipping is really slow though


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## GibboQLD

Judanero said:


> How much did it cost (total) to have it land here if you don't mind me asking?


Assuming you meant the BeerBug, I was interested in this too so I had a look -- US$275 / AU$345 going on the current exchange rate (1 USD = 1.25660 AUD).


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## kaiserben

Jack'sTavern said:


> i have the brewpi running ...
> 
> Elco, who is the brewpi guy, says that in the future he is looking to support a sensor for density/specific gravity.


I'm going to try to build my own BrewPi-style controller. 

Does anyone have details about the density/specific gravity probe being used in the BrewBug? Or know of another relatively inexpensive digital hydrometer that I could use to hook up to a new controller build? 

EDIT: I don't want to buy a complete BeerBug at RRP of $250, just a digital hydro for a fraction of that.


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## thylacine

tricache said:


> Buying lotto ticket and selling kidney now


better sell that kidney quick...

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2015/s4327442.htm


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## MastersBrewery

There was a bluetooth digital hydrometer on kick starter a good while back, though it failed. I don't know that the developer did anything further with it. It was accurate to 1 point. Sad it didn't get funded.


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## GibboQLD

kaiserben said:


> I'm going to try to build my own BrewPi-style controller.
> 
> Does anyone have details about the density/specific gravity probe being used in the BrewBug? Or know of another relatively inexpensive digital hydrometer that I could use to hook up to a new controller build?


From a brief bit of googling: "The commercially available BeerBug uses a weight that is just about 5 cubic inches of HDPE ... to float a blade above a capacitive target and then correlate the measured capacitance to the SG."

There are a stack of threads on various boards asking other ways to do it, and most of them talk about using a small, high precision load cell (typically from a jeweller's scale) running through an instrumentation amplifier before reading the output on one of the analog pins (this thread on the Arduino forum seems to have the most amount of useful discussion/data).

An alternative may be building your own automatic refractometer, assuming you can source the right lenses/prism (or make them) and a suitable CCD:



(From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractometer#Automatic_refractometers)


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## MastersBrewery

If your into your own Dev and can program a bit the Brewometer project on kick starter should give you enough to put something together. I mean hell they had a Wii controler measuring gravity as one of their very first proto's.


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## kaiserben

That Brewometer is interesting. 

There are a few failed kickstarter campaigns out there. Apparently the BrewPi guy is working on something (that he won't reveal details about because he wants to patent it). 

I've been toying with ideas to make something using this: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10221 (the company that makes them also sells a chemical/food safe version for US$60). 

My first thought is to seal it in a watertight cylinder, weighted at the bottom to make it float upright. I can see a few options and a few problems. I'm hoping me posting it here might give people ideas. You might also come up with a completely different idea by trawling through all these sensors.


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## alfadog

Just bringing up an old thread to see if there are any good/bad reviews on these gadgets.

As I have some holiday time to tinker I thought I could pick up a new toy for the brewery.

Anyone have the brewometer? how do they compare to the Beer Bug?


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## kjparker

Here's another project that looks to be similar, website is in german, but google translate works well enough for you to get the gist...

https://universam1.github.io/iSpindel/

Based on parts available from ebay / aliexpress for peanuts....


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## Mattrox

Pictures of the iSpindel build.

It's almost working. Have flashed the firmware just setting it up on the wifi network at home.


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## kaiserben

Mattrox, did you grab the parts from the list here: https://universam1.github.io/iSpindel/docs/Parts_en.html

I assume I'll need access to a 3D printer? (for the drawer) 

Roughly how much did it cost you to get these parts?


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## Lionman

I'm happy to help with printing. I wouldn't mind something like this if the parts are economical to buy.

Does anyone have the Beerbug? How has this solution matured?

It's come down a little in price, still expensive though.

Edit - If someone builds me the electronics for the iSpindel, I will print and post them drawer for free. Happy to pay for parts.


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## kaiserben

Lionman said:


> I wouldn't mind something like this if the parts are economical to buy.


Yeah - I'll be weighing up the price of parts (and hassle of me doing it myself) versus the cost of a Tilt Hydrometer (at US$120).


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## Lionman

kaiserben said:


> Yeah - I'll be weighing up the price of parts (and hassle of me doing it myself) versus the cost of a Tilt Hydrometer (at US$120).


The Tilt is easier but it doesn't have WiFi which means you need a spare Bluetooth 4.0 device to capture the logs.

I think the iSpindel can just be hooked up to your home network and log to a machine on the local network or maybe direct to the cloud?


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## Mattrox

kaiserben said:


> Mattrox, did you grab the parts from the list here: https://universam1.github.io/iSpindel/docs/Parts_en.html
> 
> I assume I'll need access to a 3D printer? (for the drawer)
> 
> Roughly how much did it cost you to get these parts?


I used ebay.

I had D1 wemos mini from a different project and thr gy 521 in a kit I perviously bought. Same with the resistors. 

But priced out with what I recently paid it comes to $37.10

I bought 5x temp sensors for $4.62
The perf. board was 10 of the 3x7cm boards for $4.75

I messed up the 1st board I made so spares come in handy when thst cheap.

I can get the 3D print done at work free, but my public library has a 3D printer.


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## Mattrox

Ps.

I am using this sled.

https://www.tinkercad.com/things/1TcD78DvxQu

There is room at the bottom for a 20g calibration weight.

I got that off ebay for $1.54.


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## Mattrox

Well, it's not in the bottle yet. But it is sending data.

Just need the switch to arrive to finish it up.

I have been manually switching it by crossing the 2 tag ends of wires to be connected to the switch. Hehehe


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