Hi, what are the plans for supporting more inputs other than temperature? Ideally analog input types for volume/pressure sensors but others like flowmeters, load cells, pH and gravity would be nice to be able to hook up. Controlling valves and automating stuff doesn’t really make sense unless you can detect liquid levels and flow, unless you brew the exact same volume every time and use the mechanical liquid level switches.
I guess it’s technically possible with some clever conversion to one-wire and writing some custom blocks in brewblox but that’s above my level of competency. Would something like this work or do you need to write some custom code? https://www.esera.de/shop/en/products/1-wire-bus-smart-home/1-wire-analog-input-1-wire-analog-output/413/1-wire-analog-input-4-fold-0-10v-iso-1-wire-bus-system?c=197 .
@edit: I guess your plans are more towards RS485 support, so the question is then when can we have blocks that support sensors over that?
Would also vote for more simple buttons and sliders in the GUI for boil control and pump speeds, and support digital input for mechanical buttons on a control panel.
We’re currently testing a new pressure sensor that’s accurate enough to measure SG.
The other items on your list are on the to-do list, but without any specific planning. Hardware/firmware development is mostly limited by how many hours Elco has in a day.
RS485 is supported in hardware, but still needs support in firmware.
A slider for basic PWM control is planned for next release. How would you envision a simple button/slider for boil control?
Digital input for the Spark is on the backlog, but we recently discussed also supporting buttons connected to the Pi.
We’re currently implementing triggered functionality in the automation service. From there it’s a small step to figure out how to use some off-the-shelf hardware button(s) as trigger.
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That pressure sensor sounds amazing. I guess you could get a three(four?)-in-one out of it (volume, density and flow rate). The fourth would be if you also could derive the density of the wort going into the kettle based on changes in SG. Then you could automate the sparging to a T.
As for PWM slider I would probably look at Brewtools GUI. Tap the pump -> pop up slider from 0-100% (or L/min if you can add feature for calibration), same for boil control. The more direct/analog feedback, the better.
No promises on additional functionality for the pressure sensor. Getting density from two vertically offset pressure sensors turned out to be fiendishly complicated, and we’re concentrating on getting that to market.
Flow rate sensors are common. A wired density sensor is altogether more interesting.
If you have linked a PWM to a Pump in the Builder, you already get a slider when you click on the pump.
If your PWM is not driven, you also get a slider to edit value when you click on the setting in the widget.
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I’d love to log pressure data during fermentation. 0-15psi in the headspace is all I’d need at the moment.