The Beerbug - Digital Hydrometer

[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.

 

[durham70]

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

Cheers

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[Mardoo]

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

 

[droid]

damn!

 

[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

 

[Mardoo]

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

 

[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.

 

[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..

 

[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

 

[GibboQLD]

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).

 

[kaiserben]

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.

 

[thylacine]

Buying lotto ticket and selling kidney now

better sell that kidney quick...

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

 

[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.

 

[GibboQLD]

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)

 

[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.