The art of brewing beer is as old as civilization itself. Many people enjoy brewing their own beer at home. Numerous steps must be taken before you can take a swig, but fermentation is one of the most critical. [Martin Kennedy] took up the hobby with his friends, and wanted a convenient way to monitor the fermentation temperature remotely. He started working on the BrewMonitor, a cloud-based homebrewing controller powered by an Arduino clone.
His goal was to create something cheap, convenient, and easy to set up. Traditional fermentation monitoring equipment is very expensive. The typical open-source alternative will set you back 80 euros (roughly $101), using the Arduino-sensor with a Raspberry Pi gateway via the BrewPi webserver. [Martin] did not want to go through the hassle of viewing BrewPi remotely, since it requires a home network and all of the configuration that would entail. Instead, he coupled an Arduino clone with a DS18B20 temperature sensor while using an ESP8266 module for wireless communication, all for less than 18 euros ($23). This connects to a simple webpage based on Scotch.io with a PHP backend (Laravel with RESTful API), a MySQL database, and an AngularJS frontend to display the graph. Once the sensor is placed into the fermenter bucket’s thermowell, the temperature is transmitted once a minute to the REST API. You can see the temperature over time (in Celsius). The design files are available on GitHub.
[Martin] would like to expand the functionality of BrewMonitor, such as adding the ability to adjust the temperature remotely by controlling a heater or fridge, and lowering its cost by single boarding it. Since the information is stored on the cloud, upgrading the system is much easier than using a separate gateway device. He doesn’t rule out crowdfunding campaigns for the future. We would like to see this developed further, since different yeast species and beer styles require very stringent conditions, especially during the weeks-long fermentation process; a 5-degree Celsius difference can ruin an entire brew! Cloud-based temperature adjustment seems like the next big goal for BrewMonitor. DIY brewers salute you, [Martin]!
[via Dangerous Prototypes]
“[Martin] did not want to go through the hassle of viewing BrewPi remotely, since it requires a home network and all of the configuration that would entail” begat “connects to a simple webpage based on Scotch.io with a PHP backend (Laravel with RESTful API), a MySQL database, and an AngularJS frontend transmitted once a minute to the REST API” ???
” The real beauty of this system, however, is that everything is saved to the Cloud and we don’t need an extra gateway device (Raspberry Pi) to get it there.”
The BrewPi docs do show how to use the gateway of your router though. Presumably [Martin] hasn’t installed OpenWRT on his router, and consequently he isn’t able to easily set a public and private net with a bridge.
route add -net 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 dev wlan0
if I’m not mistaken…
Another suggestion would be to push your data to data.sparkfun.com then chart it using imp.guru. Here’s a similar example: http://imp.guru/f1i
“[Martin] would like to … lowering its cost by single boarding it.”
Could be a single board by using the only esp8266 and the DS18B20.
Is this proven to work? Does the ESP8266 speak 1-wire?
Oh wow, yet another beer project.