Multiple chambers progress?

General
41

Same question from me…

42

I received a BrewPi for Christmas this past year and finally just got around to getting it all setup today. I have it connected to a re-purposed side by side refrigerator (Freezer side to serve beer and fridge side to ferment.)

I would also love to see support for multiple chambers to give me more finite control.

Thanks for all you are doing @Elco!

43

I know this topic has been beaten to death. But after 2 years of owning the Spark I would have thought I could control multiple chambers by now. When can we expect progress on this? It would be much appreciated.

44

We’re getting close. I want to release an update this week which includes WiFi support. It also has a lot of changes under the hood on which we will build multi-process support.

Next big update will be the multi process stuff, I think still in July.

1 Like
45

Would it be possible to be able to display the Photon wifi mac address on some menu of the BrewPi screen? I see in the code you are already displaying the IP address.

46

Yeah, I am about to sell my BrewPi’s. Two years, no changes, no new features. I really expected something else from this project.

47

I hope I can change your mind soon. I have done a ton of programming to enable new features, many things needed to be rewritten from scratch. The firmware is an almost entirely new codebase compared to 2 years ago.

We still have a static setup with 1 beer and 1 fridge sensor, and I’m sure that’s your main pain point. But by now, all objects are modular, we don’t have a real ‘beer mode/fridge mode’ anymore and we have laid the groundwork to create many independent PIDs. I feel finally ready to add the beginnings of multi process control to next release.

48

Well it’s good to hear that we are actually getting close to a big change. I guess I want give up now, would be stupid after such a long wait and so close before the target.

49

Two questions:

  1. When approximately would the “next release” with multi-chamber support be forthcoming?
  2. Regardless of exact dates, would it be correct to assume that it’s definitely coming at some point in the future (“it” being one spark being able to control more than one fermentation?) even if the exact date isn’t set in stone?

I’m considering buying a Brewpi Spark 3 for my current project (with two fermentation chambers), I can live with just having one chamber active at first as long as I know that the hardware and software will eventually support both chambers.

Thanks!

50

  1. This is a hard question to answer for me, because multi-chamber has not been my focus for the last few months (apart from making sure that other rewrites were in line with it). It also depends on whether I can attract new developers, because my own time is limited. I will probably ‘hack’ a second process in the current stack and UI, so you can control 2. This will not be pretty, but should satisfy immediate needs. A much larger rewrite is needed for ‘you can add as many PIDs as you want and have a pretty interface to manage them’.

  2. Yes, it will definitely come to the Spark 2 (photon) and 3 (p1) and if code size allows us even the Spark 1 using a spark core. It’s a software update, the hardware is capable.

51

Okay, thanks for the quick response! I’m just looking for a second process for now and don’t care much about the UI so an ugly hack would work fine for me in the short run.

52

And now we are back to:

I am a bit disappointed again…

1 Like
53

I’m sorry, I’m really doing what I can. It doesn’t help that I have not been able to find a developer to expand the team yet, while also having less time myself for software development because Geke (who processes orders and manages the warehouse) broke her neck.

54

I wish her all the best and hope that this is less serious than what it actually sounds like!

I am not disappointed about this being delayed, I am disappointed since for me your recent posts sounded like everything is basically ready to go, at least in the background. But your last post sounds like we are not even close to it.

I have been waiting a long time for this, and to get around it I have purchased and setup three BrewPis, all I have now is outdated hardware.

55

She was released from her halo an hour ago! (which fixated her neck for 3 months). It was pretty serious, but she made a good recovery.

Not even close isn’t true either, but I don’t want to get more hopes up. A lot has been done in the background for the firmware, but work on the UI has just started.

1 Like
56

Hi Elco / BrewPi :wink:

I am attempting to convert a dual-zone wine cabinet into a fermentation chamber.

The two ‘zones’ are upper and lower compartments of the cabinet, with a physical divider between sections. Each section uses the same refrigerant compressor, and a valve is used to divert coolant to the upper or lower zones depending on temperature demand.

each zone also has an integrated heater element.

I would like to be able to control each zone independently so that the upper chamber could be used to ferment and the lower could be used for bottle conditioning/storage.

Is there an early release / pre-release of BrewPi I could use which would allow me to control the heating/cooling and a valve based on demand?

Kind regards, Jonathan

57

Hi Elco,
Just thought I’d post my interest in here. I’ve managed to get hold of a second fridge to convert. I’d really love to be able to use the same BrewPi to run both of my fridges at some point in the near future. Hope progress is going well and I hope Geke is doing well too! :slight_smile: I’d be happy to put in a little development time if it would help.

58

Any news about multiple chamber progress? Regards.

59

Still looking for a dual chamber solution. I have, unused, the older Sparc2, but can two Photons be utilized with one new Pi?

60

Hi Michael,

The easiest way to do this is to install BrewPi with docker and to run 2 docker containers, with a different external port.

https://wiki.brewpi.com/getting-started/raspberry-pi-docker-install