Firstly - let me start by saying what a great job you guys have done so far! I’ve had my Spark for about a week and have been playing around with different systems, sensors, and written a few scripts to parse the data collected in different ways. All very exciting, and can see it consuming my spare time for a while to come.
There have been a few posts on here that make me cringe with sympathy for the pressure you are being put under to get things up and running, I can understand how difficult it must be juggling coding time with logistics and order fulfilment. Hopefully you’re on top of the orders now, and can put a some time into progressing the device capabilities.
There are a few features that have come up several times on here, that I think a few people are waiting for - so I thought a “Wishlist” thread would be good to have it all in one place, and you can then update with progress on different features.
Personally, my wishlist, in order of preference:
WiFi Support
My brewery is out in the shed, so WiFi is a necessity for me
Multi Chamber support
I’ve got two chambers, both stuck on stc-1000’s. It will be demoralising putting a brew on “the old way” once I’ve got Brewpi in place. If the Spark software supports reporting and controlling multiple chambers (>4 sensors & >4 relays), then the rest can be cobbled together without the snazzy new interface…
New Web interface
This will make control the brewery a joy!
(As we’ve discussed separately, happy to help with the UI JS, just shout)
Any idea on progress of these three features?
What other features are top of other peoples’ lists?
Our immediate focus is on a UI for the touch screen, then wifi support and that should then be us finished with brewpi spark 1.0 based on the existing brewpi software base.
This then gives us the time to focus on brewpi spark 2.0 which will support multi-ferment and a new web UI. While we intend to have progress visible every few weeks, I doubt it will be usable for multi ferment until at least after the summer.
Being a complete noob as far as what’s going on with the development of the BrewPi Spark, someone help me understand the current, as is, capabilities of the BrewPi Spark. There’s so much information in this community, its hard to follow.
As it stands now, and given the current basic configuration of the Spark will I be able to do the following for a fermentation fridge:
Control 4 separate SSR’s???
Log data from 4 separate temp sensors???
Remotely view the data logged from the 4 separate temp sensors???
I have very little programming ability. I can hack away, but really it’s just a waste of my time because I know so little about writing code. I CAN follow instructions though! I was able to get the RasberryPi up and running and headless!
Knowing all that, I can use my STC-1000’s along with the BrewPi to control 4 SSR’s. I was hoping not to use the STC-1000’s, but I am in too deep with the BrewPi to get out now.
Some some sort of e-mail warning system? Or perhaps even better, an Apple Push notification. Would be nice to get a notification when specified thresholds are met, such as too low temp, too high temp etc
Yes! Notifications and a mobile App would be great. Almost posted this myself last night, but came up with an interim solution with a lot less effort than expected:
This is Android only, using an App called “Websnap”, which allows you to point it at an element on a webpage, and display it as a widget. It can also generate a notification when the content changes - although this isn’t ideal at the moment, as the temp typically changes a tiny bit upon every refresh. But, a good start and motivation…
What I’m looking at doing now is exposing just the content of the “LCD” screen as a text (xml / json) feed that can be consumed by a mobile client. Can’t imagine this will be too tricky, just need to pick apart the JS that populates it. Once that can run server-side, it can expose a “state” to be consumed by a simple App, or can generate and send an email based on the content of the feed. Plenty of options.
As Elco said, here is the script section where we have the current temp and the setpoint temp.
putting some code there we could make a check and send an email:
My Wish list addition
I realise there may be huge changed to the Web gui in the near future but if possible
Have the install script modify the hostname from raspberrypi, to either brewpi or be changed by user at a prompt. The script would need to modify /etc/hosts and /etc/hostname , the changes wouldn’t become apparent until the next reboot…
something like
#Assign existing hostname to $hostn
hostn=$(cat /etc/hostname)
#Display existing hostname
echo “Existing hostname is $hostn”
#Ask for new hostname $newhost
echo "Enter new hostname: "
read newhost
#change hostname in /etc/hosts & /etc/hostname
sudo sed -i “s/$hostn/$newhost/g” /etc/hosts
sudo sed -i “s/$hostn/$newhost/g” /etc/hostname
#display new hostname
echo “Your new hostname is $newhost”
Have the Pi’s hostname in the index.php by changing the following
> <title><?php echo gethostname();?> reporting for duty!</title>
in the Beer-panel.php change the following
<?php echo gethostname();?> is Fermenting: <?php echo $beerName;?>
In future releases where one Pi is controlling more than one Brewpi Spark be able to identify and give each Brewpi spark a friendly ID or hostname or node name .
Does anyone know of an iPhone app that accomplishes the same thing as the websnap app that @benbenson uses?
I also see that there are some scripts above that look interesting, but I have no idea how to try them out. Could someone point me in the right direction (I’m a Linux newby).
