iSpindel Digital Hydrometer

[Em Tubby]

I 3D printed the sleds for mine in different colours, and the coding is irrelevant because I feed mine into my BrewPi server.

Lol, that's a good one, but in actual fact it's no different. If I find a craft beer I like and imitate the recipe for my own personal use I'm not impacting anyone's "livelihood", nor is anyone getting "done over" if I build an iSpindel for my own personal use. In fact unlike Tilt their code is open source, not in copyright violation in any jurisdiction and I'm not selling them to anyone, so not sure what you are trying to say here?

Well I talked to Baron Brewing in California last year and they reckon the basic idea was copied in the iSpindel design. Not verified it though.

 

[kaljade]

Well I talked to Baron Brewing in California last year and they reckon the basic idea was copied in the iSpindel design. Not verified it though.

Yeah, the basic design of all automobiles were copied from the model T Ford, doesn't make it a copyright violation though. But the point is iSpindel don't actually sell anything, so their not out there trying to profit from Baron Brewing (who hold a patent for a product quite dissimilar to the iSpindel), otherwise they could have quite succeussfully sued them.

It does smack a little of sour grapes for them to be making those accusations, albeit quietly, but still not overly professional.

 

[kaljade]

At the end of the day, it comes down to personal preference, if you prefer Tilt that's great, there's a separate thread here for Tilt. This thread is for iSpindel, so remember Ghostbusters 101 and "never cross the beams".

 

[chesl73]

@chesl73 they shouldn't need a reset every 3 days. That sounds like the firmware or something is crashing after 3 days or there's an issue with sending. If you wanted to go back a version, I would say try 6.0.0 or even re-flash 6.0.2.

I know this sounds boring, but, when there are issues, if you sit there and watch it for 15 mins, you should see it wake and the blue wemos activity light flash a few times before it goes off.

With Termite, you'll want to be using a baud of 115200 if they're in run mode, which yours should be when it's on, lower baud for boot issues. It would be interesting to know if it's waking up, if it is, what the message in Termite says when it is waking up and not able to send event data.

I re-flashed the firmware to 6.0.1.
I had it working and dropped into the fermenter - worked very well for about 2.5 days then as normal just stopped sending data. I took it out, put it into/out of operational mode and checked it connects and dropped it in again. After 3 days it stopped again.
Really strange given it works for a 2 - 3 days then just stops.
The blue light still flashes on the 30 minute mark when it should do.
I hooked it up to USB and ran Termite and this is what I get:

This seems to suggest it has issues with connecting to the WIFI but it's been okay for the previous 3 days!
Any thoughts anyone?
I might try and drop down to a version 5 firmware for the next brew just to see how that goes.

 

[Nullnvoid]

Finally bought a battery for mine yesterday.... Got home, all excited put the battery in put it all into the tube and it was tight as F! Pushed it down as best I could and couldn't get it further down than 60degrees. Tapped it down and noticed it wasn't looking great so stupidly grabbed some small pliers and pulled it out so I could snip the long prongs off.

In the process I have snapped off the reset button on the side and the blue light that flashes no longer flashes

Guess I just wasted a bit of money being careless....****!

 

[angus_grant]

ohh dude, that sucks. Was looking forward to someone else integrating it into my site.

Sounds like you "might" be able to replace just the wifi module, and not the entire board.

I very gently bent my pins towards the centre of the boards as it was a very tight fit same as yours. It then miraculously settled straight at 26 degrees so I threw a tiny shrink-wrapped nut in the bottom for 25 degrees. Score.

My other iSpindel I have to replace the gyro as it's not transmitting angles. Still transmits temperature info. Hopefully that is a small job.

 

[Nullnvoid]

I've given it to a mate to take to work and hopefully one of the guys there can solder it back on.

If not I'll probably try and get a new one.

But for the brief time it was working, it integrated really well with BC and keen to give it another go!

 

[Bourkie]

Hey Angus, I'm happy to give your site a crack next time. I don't want to pay for ubidots, so will give BC a crack next time. Although this won't be for a while as I've got three batches aging in bottle and about to go on holidays.

 

[angus_grant]

We all need 4 batches aging at one time.

Good news. Hopefully you find the integration as easy as NullnVoid

 

[krz]

Well unfortunately the ispindel doesn't work in my all SS unitank fermenter.
It works outside, but the signal doesn't make it thru the steel walls to my router which is 10m away,

 

[angus_grant]

Your SS tank is pretty much the worst environment to try and get signals out of.

You "might" get a signal out by breaking the metallic connection between the body and lid. Thick silicon seal between lid and body. You might also need to break the metallic connection between hinges/clamps.

Try isolating lid and fermentor body. If that doesn't work, are you able to put your router right next to the fermentor?

 

[krz]

Your SS tank is pretty much the worst environment to try and get signals out of.

You "might" get a signal out by breaking the metallic connection between the body and lid. Thick silicon seal between lid and body. You might also need to break the metallic connection between hinges/clamps.

Try isolating lid and fermentor body. If that doesn't work, are you able to put your router right next to the fermentor?

Yeah I know. I could place another spare router right next to it, that might work. Unable to break the seals as I usually ferment closed.
I have heard that the tilt works with my fermenter so maybe bluetooth works better than wifi.

 

[Terry]

I put an AP using another ESP8266 with an external antenna in the fridge with my SS fermenter. The iSpindel in the SS fermenter worked via the AP without any issues. The main router is about 15m away from AP.

 

[angus_grant]

Based on my experience Bluetooth Tilt works better than the iSpindel.

I had to add a higher powered Bluetooth antenna to my Raspberry Pi so I didn't have to place the Pi right next to the seal.

This was working with 120L commercial SS jacketed fermentors.

 

[pbezza]

Well unfortunately the ispindel doesn't work in my all SS unitank fermenter.
It works outside, but the signal doesn't make it thru the steel walls to my router which is 10m away,

Put an esp8266 wifi repeater above your fermenter https://github.com/martin-ger/esp_wifi_repeater

 

[cliffo]

I had to add a higher powered Bluetooth antenna to my Raspberry Pi

Mate, do you have details of the antenna?

I have to put my RPi in the fermenting fridge to be able to get the signal from the Tilt through my kegmenter.

 

[angus_grant]

Sorry about the delay:
http://rfmodules.com.au/UD100-G03?search=UD100-G03 (USB bluetooth module)
+
http://rfmodules.com.au/DAT5-G01R?search=DAT5-G01R (add-on antenna)

You will need to disable the on-board bluetooth so the 2 bluetooth modules don't argue with each other.
This page worked for me: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=178485

I also have this saved as well, but that seems to say the same as the first page
https://discourse.osmc.tv/t/disable-rpi3-internal-bluetooth-device/15760/2

 

[Lyons]

has anyone had any success integrating the iSpindel into CraftBeerPi? i got iSpindel from bee2gee last week and finally got around to playing with it, have got it sending data to ubidot, but when i try and link it to craftbeerpi i dont receive any data

 

[Joachim]

Dear Lyons,
I am Joachim from Germany... and i also looking for infos to connect my Ispindel to cbpi. Did youn have success with it?
It’s hard to find information...

Regards
Joachim

 

[bee2gee]

@Lyons and @Joachim, just doing some reading, there doesn't seem to be a lot on the subject, whilst I don't have CBP myself, the below might be useful.

https://github.com/Manuel83/craftbeerpi/wiki/iSpindel
Reference to CBP 2.2, unsure if this is relevant anymore or you can build with the 'hydrometer branch' as recommended. This eludes to the UI in the iSpindel having the ability to select CBP from the drop down of providers.

https://github.com/IndyJoeA/cbpi_iSpindel
This seems to be a CBP 3.0 plugin, based on https://github.com/Manuel83/craftbeerpi-plugins/blob/master/plugins.yaml it suggests this as the recommended plugin for iSpindel and CBP 3.0.

Keen to see how you get on.