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BrewPi: Raspberry Pi and Arduino Powered Fermentation Chamber

Posted by Unknown on from the includes-kitchen-sink dept.

For the homebrew hardware nerds out there who also homebrew beer: "BrewPi is an open source fermentation controller that runs on an Arduino (for now) and a Raspberry Pi. It can control your beer temperature with 0.1 degree precision, log temperature data in nice graphs and is fully configurable from a web interface." Source code. The article has lots of photos and screenshots. The project involves rewiring the compressor's electrical connection through a PID controller, and includes both a fancy OLED display on the fridge and support for logging statistics and control over the web. If you've ever had the joy of gradually crash-cooling a lager (not too fast, not too slow), the software includes settings to effect gradual temperatures changes in the fermenting wort. Certainly fancier than a Johnson controller and a probe attached to a fermenter with a strip of insulating tape.

3 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. multiple control points by exabrial · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'd be interested in multiple control points... I've started to do pressurized fermentation once the gravity of the beer of approaches the final gravity. This carbonates the beer without a secondary fermentation, and reduces risk of introducing oxygen and contamination into the beer. If the system could electronically monitor specific gravity then seal the airlock, but blow off any excess over 10psi... would be awesome!

  2. This, my friends, by tpstigers · · Score: 5, Funny

    is what technology is for.

  3. Re:Do the same with a handful of transistors by afaik_ianal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You reckon you can do temperature control in an uncontrolled environment with a handful of transistors? Keep in mind the external temperature is uncontrolled. The yeast itself generates heat within the ferment at varying (and often unpredictable) rates.

    The simplest approach you can reasonable consider for the level of control they're looking for in their environment would be a PID controller, which if memory serves me correctly will have more than a handful of transistors in it. You're going to need a pretty decent PID to handle temperature profiling, which their solution

    They're using cheap, off-the-shelf parts to solve their problem, which in turn allow them to put extra features in there like web control, and it's now much easier for anyone to do the same thing. The parts may not have existed in 1964, but you need to keep in mind The Doors aren't the only good thing to happen since then.