Feature Suggestion - Alarms

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Alarms are a core feature of industrial HMI systems. It would be a nice addition in Brewblox. These are some things you might consider:

Here I think it would be important to have the ability to tie alarms to value and setpoint to allow setting up deviation alarms by difference or % difference. For example, I might set up an alarm on my chiller which has its own controller to alarm at 35F but my fermenters I would want to alarm if the temp is +/- say 2F from setpoint.

Alarms would typically show in a log (probably a log widget here) and often a banner at the top or bottom of the screen. Often the UI will play a sound but that should be configurable. Possibly the BrewPi controller could be set to beep too, assuming that’s technically possible.

Alarms typically have an acknowledgement. This “silences” the alarm until conditions return to normal again. A new excursion into alarm is a new event requiring a new acknowledgement.

In Brewblox it would be awesome if one could set up an SMTP profile, set alarm conditions and check a box to receive email (or text via cell carrier email to text gateways) when an alarm occurs.

Typically there’s 4 alarm setpoints for a given value – Low, Low-Low, High, and High-High. A fermenter might be configured to show an alarm on screen for a 1F deviation then on screen, with sound, and an email on a 2F deviation.

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I’m using the Brewblox integration with Home Assistant to do much of this. It’s another app to install, but might be worth looking at in the short term. It’s only a proof of concept at the moment though!

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Thanks for writing down how alarms are often implemented. Different alarm levels sounds like a good approach.

We are currently trying out node-red for higher-level automation and custom scripting, which is likely where these alarms will be added. We already have an option for custom sandboxed javascript in the automation service, but the node-red approach will be easier.

You’ll hear more about this soon.