As I anxiously await possible integration of the brewmometer, I have been wanting to have something that I can remotely monitor. After some searching I found ‘Motion’ for RaspberryPi. Motion is a video surveillance software that is fairly easy to setup. So I got a USB camera that is compatible with the Pi, and after installing Motion my camera just showed up. I did a bit of config to turn off saving images and videos, and enabled the built in webcam. With the camera pointed at my pitcher of StarSan, and a couple of 12v LED lights I can see how much bubbling is going on from anywhere!
The dark disk is an array of LED lights that I had pulled out of something else. I plan to mount all this up in a nice way, but at the moment it is serving the purpose.
Very nice! I switched from better bottles to a conical, but downside is that I cannot see my beer evolve anymore. Maybe an endoscope camera with LED would work?
I was wondering if there is a glass or plastic triclamp cap that i could use and do the same type of thing to look into my conical. I have a couple of extra ports on the lid of mine that could be used for something like that.
I was also thinking of putting a triclamp sight glass on my racking port or dump valve.
Nice! When I picked up my Pi this week to start my build I got the RPi 3 Model B Camera Kit just for this reason! Haven’t yet figured out whether I’ll use the cam to monitor my blow off tube or the kraussen line, still getting the basic build underway, but glad there are others out there with the same idea.
Are you not brewing at home? Or what is the usecase for this? The only advantage I see is to be able to see if the fermentation started succesfully from a remote location.
For me it is much more important to protect my beer from light than seeing it.
And be carefull with sight glasses from china if your conical can take pressure. A friend of mine bought one from Aliexpress which blew up at 0.7 Bar, even to it was specified to be able to hold 3 Bar.
I brew at home yes. I like this so that I can see how the fermentation is going from work/remote. I am not worried about light as I’m viewing a blowoff tube from my stainless conical.
It’s mostly because I’m an IT geek, already have an RPi, and can.
I think if I would try to monitor my blow-off tube I would go for another sensor like a hal-sensor, flow-meter, ultrasonic sensor, a microphone, a light-barrier or something like this. Something that would give me a number, and not just a view. This way you could actually see the fermentation increasing in numbers and then slow down again in a graph.
But for me this is not necessary. I can actually see how strong the fermentation is by looking at how often my BrewBit starts cooling
