Any update on when the BrewPi Photon version will be available? I’m not using anything right now and this product seems like it has great potential. Mainly looking for fermentation control as of now.
Thanks.
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Elco,
Can you let people know the process to replace the spark with a photon? My photon just arrvied, and I don’t want to screw anything up.
Thanks.
That was quick! We haven’t published any firmware for the photon yet. @Elco and I will need to get together this week to make a release for the photon.
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Isn’t it meant to be a straight drop in replacement?
Yes the hardware is a drop in replacement, but you have to flash firmware - firmware compiled for the core is not going to run on a photon without being recompiled.
Looks like there starting to arrive thick and fast. Mine has just been delivered. Just need the recomplied firmware…
Any update on this @Elco? Excited to purchase the BrewPi Spark and finally treat my yeast with some respect!
Glad to see the valve & SSR interface units available! However I do have a question on the controller. I bought one of the first ones out, ~Jan., and am wondering if I am reading the documentation correctly. I need to replace my Spark unit with a Photon unit and I have not even used it yet?
No the Spark Core will continue to be supported. The great thing about the Spark/Particle framework is that they hide most of the hardware specifics behind a hardware abstraction layer, so it is easy to support both targets.
Elco,
Thank you for your timely response. Just a quick follow up on the differences between the two processors. Does the Photon have an advantage in the processing power or with additional hardware implementation capability? I probably will not be putting my brew system back into service until mid-Sept or Oct as I have a bunch of work to do on my retirement place (new roof, floor, etc.)
Thanks again for your time and support Elco.
Mike
The Photon has more reliable WiFi. It is also faster, but we don’t really need that.
Because the Photon has more program memory, our firmware and the spark cloud stack will fit together. So it should be possible to expose variables to the spark cloud later on the Photon.
But for just running your brewery, the Spark Core will be fine.
Any body know how to de-update?
It looks like when I had a mess around last night (after, err, checking some samples 
) I mistakenly installed the early release
Aug 08 23:27 Found BrewPi v0.3.0a running on particle photon (or similar message.
Now it won’t let me backdate to 0.2.7
Any Ideas? Never done this before!
Thanks, James
(PS couldn’t find a way to post a new topic either)
do you have the original .bin file in the /home/brewpi/utils/downloads/0.2.7 folder on your pi?
put the core into Dfu mode.
If you do you, I think you should be able to use the command sudo python flashDfu.py --file /home/brewpi/utils/downloads/0.2.7/brewpi-0.2.7-core.bin (or what ever the .bin file was called). or you can download from https://github.com/BrewPi/firmware/releases scroll down to the 0.2.7 section.
Rich
If your script is the latest version, flashDfu will default to the latest stable release. You can also specify --tag 0.2.11
OK, please forgive me I’m usually OK with these things but as I have no foundation i’m all at sea. So I tried running
sudo python /home/brewpi/utils/flashDfu.py
Did not find any DFU devices.
Is your Photon or Spark Core running in DFU mode (blinking yellow)?
Waiting until a DFU device is connected…
I couldn’t get the photon into dfu mode, I also started to question whether it would work. So far I have followed the automated script installation of everything (highly recommended).
Is all I need to do:
- get photon into DFU mode
- run script as above
or do I need to do other things because the stuff I need still sits on the Pi.
Apologies for my ignorance.
J
You have to put the board in Dfu mode by holding the setup button while pressing the reset button or connecting the USB/power input. Hold it until the LED flashes yellow.
sudo python /home/brewpi/utils/flashDfu.py
Success! Found BrewPi v0.2.11 build 0.2.11-0-ga28c22d, running on a Particle Photon with a V2 shield on port /dev/ttyACM0
Wonderfully simple to get the photon into Dfu mode using the setup button and USB (I had trouble finding the reset button through the hole) thank you! Whole process took <2 mins.
Hi guys, I’m having some issues with my newly arrived BrewPi (Photon).
First time I plugged it in everything seemed fine - the BrewPi interface came up on the screen and all was well.
I pulled the power from it last night, and plugged it in again this morning. The stylus calibration screen came up, did that, and then suddenly the screen went grey. After ~15 seconds the screen goes white and the BrewPi beeps. Screen turns grey again and the process (grey-15s-white-beep) repeats itself. Status light flashing red.
I reset the device using the reset and setup buttons, status light flashing blue. Beeping stops, just blank screen now. I got the Photon into DFU mode (yellow light blinking), and then tried to flash the Photon to the latest stable release (0.2.11) using our favourite sudo python /home/brewpi/utils/flashDfu.py command. However, something seems to have gone amiss, for now it has reverted to the nerve wracking grey-15s-white-beep cycle. I don’t know what to do.
–
Below is the log from the Pi when flashing:
pi@raspberrypi /home/brewpi $ sudo python /home/brewpi/utils/flashDfu.py
dfu-util not found, downloading dfu-util…
downloading http://dfu-util.sourceforge.net/releases/dfu-util-0.7-binaries/linux-armel/dfu-util
Detecting DFU devices
Found 1 devices: [‘2b04:d006’]
Device identified as Particle Photon
Downloading latest firmware…
Latest stable version on GitHub: 0.2.11
downloading https://github.com/BrewPi/firmware/releases/download/0.2.11/brewpi-0.2.11-photon.bin
Firmware downloaded to /home/brewpi/utils/downloads/0.2.11/brewpi-0.2.11-photon.bin
downloading https://github.com/BrewPi/firmware/releases/download/0.2.11/system-part1-09dd809-photon.bin
downloading https://github.com/BrewPi/firmware/releases/download/0.2.11/system-part2-09dd809-photon.bin
Release contains updated system firmware for the photon
First updating system firmware for the Photon
dfu-util 0.7
Copyright 2005-2008 Weston Schmidt, Harald Welte and OpenMoko Inc.
Copyright 2010-2012 Tormod Volden and Stefan Schmidt
This program is Free Software and has ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
Please report bugs to dfu-util@lists.gnumonks.org
Filter on vendor = 0x2b04 product = 0xd006
Opening DFU capable USB device… ID 2b04:d006
Run-time device DFU version 011a
Found DFU: [2b04:d006] devnum=0, cfg=1, intf=0, alt=0, name="@Internal Flash /0x08000000/03016Ka,01016Kg,01064Kg,07128Kg"
Claiming USB DFU Interface…
Setting Alternate Setting #0 …
Determining device status: state = dfuIDLE, status = 0
dfuIDLE, continuing
DFU mode device DFU version 011a
Device returned transfer size 4096
No valid DFU suffix signature
Warning: File has no DFU suffix
DfuSe interface name: "Internal Flash "
Downloading to address = 0x08020000, size = 248764
…
File downloaded successfully
dfu-util 0.7
Copyright 2005-2008 Weston Schmidt, Harald Welte and OpenMoko Inc.
Copyright 2010-2012 Tormod Volden and Stefan Schmidt
This program is Free Software and has ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
Please report bugs to dfu-util@lists.gnumonks.org
Filter on vendor = 0x2b04 product = 0xd006
Opening DFU capable USB device… ID 2b04:d006
Run-time device DFU version 011a
Found DFU: [2b04:d006] devnum=0, cfg=1, intf=0, alt=0, name="@Internal Flash /0x08000000/03016Ka,01016Kg,01064Kg,07128Kg"
Claiming USB DFU Interface…
Setting Alternate Setting #0 …
Determining device status: state = dfuDNLOAD-IDLE, status = 0
aborting previous incomplete transfer
Determining device status: state = dfuIDLE, status = 0
dfuIDLE, continuing
DFU mode device DFU version 011a
Device returned transfer size 4096
No valid DFU suffix signature
Warning: File has no DFU suffix
DfuSe interface name: "Internal Flash "
Downloading to address = 0x08060000, size = 150432
…
File downloaded successfully
Now writing BrewPi firmware /home/brewpi/utils/downloads/0.2.11/brewpi-0.2.11-photon.bin
dfu-util 0.7
Copyright 2005-2008 Weston Schmidt, Harald Welte and OpenMoko Inc.
Copyright 2010-2012 Tormod Volden and Stefan Schmidt
This program is Free Software and has ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
Please report bugs to dfu-util@lists.gnumonks.org
Filter on vendor = 0x2b04 product = 0xd006
Opening DFU capable USB device… ID 2b04:d006
Run-time device DFU version 011a
Found DFU: [2b04:d006] devnum=0, cfg=1, intf=0, alt=0, name="@Internal Flash /0x08000000/03016Ka,01016Kg,01064Kg,07128Kg"
Claiming USB DFU Interface…
Setting Alternate Setting #0 …
Determining device status: state = dfuDNLOAD-IDLE, status = 0
aborting previous incomplete transfer
Determining device status: state = dfuIDLE, status = 0
dfuIDLE, continuing
DFU mode device DFU version 011a
Device returned transfer size 4096
No valid DFU suffix signature
Warning: File has no DFU suffix
DfuSe interface name: "Internal Flash "
Downloading to address = 0x080a0000, size = 57432
…
File downloaded successfully
Error during download get_status
Error during download get_status
Programming done, now resetting EEPROM to defaults
Opening serial port
Aug 20 2015 20:28:43 Opening serial port
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/home/brewpi/utils/flashDfu.py”, line 199, in
programmer.fetch_version("Success! ")
File “/home/brewpi/utils/…/programController.py”, line 296, in fetch_version
version = brewpiVersion.getVersionFromSerial(self.ser)
File “/home/brewpi/utils/…/brewpiVersion.py”, line 60, in getVersionFromSerial
ser.setTimeout(oldTimeOut) # restore previous serial timeout value
File “/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/serial/serialutil.py”, line 402, in setTimeout
if self._isOpen: self._reconfigurePort()
File “/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/serial/serialposix.py”, line 325, in _reconfigurePort
raise SerialException(“Could not configure port: %s” % msg)
serial.serialutil.SerialException: Could not configure port: (5, ‘Input/output error’)
I’d like other investigate this a bit more. Because you are in the Netherlands, a swap is easy. Can you send yours back? I’ll ship you a new one and will use yours to debug the issue.