CraftBeerPI Brew Controller

[Manuel]

Hi,

I like to present my Raspberry PI base brew controller CraftBeerPI.

Features:

- Control as many kettles as you like
- Hardware control: agitator, heater, pumps, valves
- Installation wizard
- Flexible brew steps
- Automatic and manual steps
- Smartphone, tablet and desktop user interface
- 3 standard kettle automatic logics
- Custom logics can be implemented easily
- Recipe book
- Temperatur chart for each kettle
- Support for direct GPIO, PiFace or Gembird USB Socket
- Support for Fahrenheit and Celsius
- Free!

Website: www.craftbeerpi.com
Facebook: facebook.com/craftbeerpi

Cheers,
Manuel

 

[hobospy]

Looks interesting, hoping to add some sort of control to my Crown Urn over the next month to get a bit of accuracy on reaching mashing temps. Currently looking at buying an Auber Ins PID but this might also work and save me a big chunk of money.

Anyone with any info on the temperature probe being used in this, apparently it is a DS1820 single wire probe?

Manuel, anymore info on what this can do, I can sort of guess from the pictures but couldn't get too much more info from the website?

Thanks,

Christopher

 

[GibboQLD]

Anyone with any info on the temperature probe being used in this, apparently it is a DS1820 single wire probe?

Had a quick look at the github codebase -- looks like it supports 1wire straight out of the box (i.e., DS18B20), but also has provision for custom temperature probes to be added as required.

Looks to control temperature using a python PID script.

Seems like a fairly interesting project, reckon I might have more of a look through the codebase when I get some time.

Edit: There's a thread over on Homebrew Talk too.

 

[Manuel]

Correct, the software supports 1wire thermometer out of the box. But the architecture of the application is build in a way that it can be extended quite easy. As mentioned before with a few programming skills you can connect other types of thermometer. The same holds for the heating/automatic logic. Out of the box it supports a pid, a overshoot logic and a really simple fermentation logic to control a fridge.

Now some information how this software works.

After the the first start the setup wizard will pop up. You select you hardware setup and do the basic configuration of your kettles. You can select between 1 and 3 kettles during the wizard but in general you can setup as many kettles as you like.

Next step is to configure you recipe steps. It supports mashing and boiling steps. You key in step name, a timer, a target temperature, select the kettle for that step and select if it's an automatic or manual step. Automatic steps will switch to the next step by the self. For manual step the brewer has to click the next button. The recipes can be saved in a internal recipe book.

To start the brew process you switch to the dashboard view and click start. The software will high light the selected kettle for the first step and will a set the target temperature for the kettle. The automatic (i.e. Pid) will keep the temperature. Via the web ui you can switch on and off additional hardware like pumps or valves.
The software will automatically start the timer when the target temperature is reached. For each kettle you can show a temperature line chart.

I will make a short introduction video the next days. Maybe this gives a better overview.

Let me know if you have further questions or need support for the installation.

Regards
Manuel

 

[sp0rk]

I happened to receive a free Raspberry Pi 3 from IBM yesterday, so I'm thinking I'll run CraftBeerPi on it
Just hoping there's enough power there to run some torrent server stuff in the background

 

[SBOB]

I happened to receive a free Raspberry Pi 3 from IBM yesterday,

me too... nice freebie

 

[dblunn]

How did you blokes manage a free Rpi?

 

[SBOB]

How did you blokes manage a free Rpi?

IBM developers promotion (its over now)

to be honest im surprised I got one, but Im not complaining

 

[dblunn]

I have a mk 1 pi. Nice but will not run the code mentioned in this thread. Good luck to you, hope you put it to good use. They are a nice system.
Dave

 

[hobospy]

Correct, the software supports 1wire thermometer out of the box. But the architecture of the application is build in a way that it can be extended quite easy. As mentioned before with a few programming skills you can connect other types of thermometer. The same holds for the heating/automatic logic. Out of the box it supports a pid, a overshoot logic and a really simple fermentation logic to control a fridge.

Now some information how this software works.

After the the first start the setup wizard will pop up. You select you hardware setup and do the basic configuration of your kettles. You can select between 1 and 3 kettles during the wizard but in general you can setup as many kettles as you like.

Next step is to configure you recipe steps. It supports mashing and boiling steps. You key in step name, a timer, a target temperature, select the kettle for that step and select if it's an automatic or manual step. Automatic steps will switch to the next step by the self. For manual step the brewer has to click the next button. The recipes can be saved in a internal recipe book.

To start the brew process you switch to the dashboard view and click start. The software will high light the selected kettle for the first step and will a set the target temperature for the kettle. The automatic (i.e. Pid) will keep the temperature. Via the web ui you can switch on and off additional hardware like pumps or valves.
The software will automatically start the timer when the target temperature is reached. For each kettle you can show a temperature line chart.

I will make a short introduction video the next days. Maybe this gives a better overview.

Let me know if you have further questions or need support for the installation.

Regards
Manuel

Thanks for that Manuel, good description, video would be really good though.

 

[GibboQLD]

I have a mk 1 pi. Nice but will not run the code mentioned in this thread.

There's no reason why it wouldn't run on a Mk1, since it's all python-based and not limited by specific ARM instruction sets.

The website even claims that it runs on all Raspi models.

 

[dblunn]

There's no reason why it wouldn't run on a Mk1, since it's all python-based and not limited by specific ARM instruction sets.

The website even claims that it runs on all Raspi models.

I'm sure I saw it stated that it only runs on later models, glad to be wrong though. I'll dig out my old Rpi and see if it will work.

 

[MastersBrewery]

Might be os dependant. Jessie changed the folder structure of var/www/ so it may be a Jessie-Wheezy thing.

 

[Manuel]

Hi,

I run it on a Raspberry PI model A.
The software architecture is quite simple. It's a "Python Flask" based web application with some background jobs.
The user interface is a responsive Angularjs application. Most computing power is required for the web browser.
Many people are using a tablet or a smartphone to display the UI.

 

[Manuel]

How to install CraftBeerPI software. Step by step video.
It takes less than 5 min to install the software from scratch.

https://asciinema.org/a/du84msz9t56yqqg6j6qfjmvjd

 

[Manuel]

As promised here a video of CraftBeerPI


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zM2dnFyB5w&feature=youtu.be

 

[Manuel]

CraftBeerPI 2.1 offers a HTTP {REST} API. That gives other software programs the possibility to communicate with CraftBeerPI. For example a brew recipie planning tool can push data directly into CraftBeerPI.
The API is documented by using Swagger.io. With Swagger you can generate a CraftBeerPI REST client for your favorite programming language.

CraftBeerPI {REST} API: http://craftbeerpi.com/api/#/

For the version 2.2 CraftBeerPI will support the import of Beer.xml from BeerSmith

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/craftbeerpi

 

[sp0rk]

Thanks Manuel!
I still haven't got mine set up but I'm finally in the process of ordering my parts to get it done
Looking forward to beer.xml support, that way we can hopefully just push recipes and mash schedules straight across

Great work!

 

[GibboQLD]

CraftBeerPI 2.1 offers a HTTP {REST} API.

Nicely done Manuel -- I've recently finished building an Excel-based tool at work with embedded REST/JSON capabilities, so my mind immediately jumped to a modified version of IanH's Kit/Extract/BIAB calculators that can push mash steps/hardware information directly to the RPi.

Reading between the lines, am I right in guessing that the v2.2 API will allow recipes to be pushed to the RPi in addition to importing BeerXML?

 

[Manuel]

Yes you are right. The version 2.2 will support both features. CraftBeerPI is a platform which is open to communicate with other systems.

Cheers
Manuel