I’ve been brewing with a 20gal BrewBoss system for a long time, one of the first versions. Since Covid it seems be be getting hard to get replies from BrewBoss on replacement parts for the system. I’m having Wifi connection drop outs to the controller. This stated me thinking about cutting it over to my Spark 3 that controls my fermentation cooler. Its a single heating element and pump. I have a spare 1 wire temp probe and plan to reuse the SSR that is in the BrewBoss controller. I know using brew bloxs would make the transition pretty easy.
Questions so far that I have are : If I make a Dashboard for the brew system will the fermentation and brew system control together ?? Meaning I don’t want to interrupt beer fermenting on a brew day. Thinking they would both continue to control independently ??
Is there a way in BrewBloxs to define a countdown timer ?? One that I could use and set time during the brew day ??
Is there a way to define a “button” on the dashboard to turn the pump on and off ??
The recipe step files are going to be missed for the reminders they give but most of the time I manually control the BrewBoss anyway.
I’m early on it the thought of moving over to the Spark to do the control, but I think it would be a good option when my BrewBoss controller does crap out !!! Any thoughts or advice ??
Thanks in advance !!
You can run multiple independent systems on the same controller. It doesn’t matter whether a system is a brew kettle, a fermentation tank, or a ceiling fan.
If your brew room is physically removed from your fermentation setups, you’ll want to use a different controller to avoid long sensor cables. In this case, you can control multiple controllers with the same UI.
There’s a countdown widget in the UI. It will not sound an alarm, but it will keep track of time when you temporarily close or reload the UI.
You can add a widget to a dashboard for the Digital Actuator block that controls the pump. You can toggle on/off there.
You can add a spark service with a simulated controller with brewblox-ctl add-spark --simulation, and use this to model your brewery setup before you make any physical changes.
I tried to add the simulation service but it says “spark-one” does not have any connection settings. spark-one is my fermentation controller and I have a beer fermenting now and didn’t want to mess it up so I exited. Can the simulation controller be added with my other one running ??
You can run parallel services. The warning is that spark-one will currently connect to any real (not simulation) controller it finds. This becomes a problem if you have multiple real controllers.
To fix the potential problem, run the suggested command: brewblox-ctl add-spark -f --name spark-one. This will discover active controllers, and ask you to pick one. After that, it will only connect to that specific controller.
Again, your spark-one will never be confused by a simulation service, and vice versa.
1 Like
