Query about past topics about automation of the mashing process

Hello everyone,

I’ve noticed that over the past few years, a whole series of threads have been started on the topic of “Implementing features to automate the brewing process”, such as the one by PlazzmiK from May 2021:

"How hard would it be for me (knowing some basic programming) to rewrite the Blocks | Brewblox 5 widget/block/module to implement a simple auto-temperature step based on the following:

Step 1 - 30° - 10 minutes
Step 2 - 40° - 20 minutes
Step 3 - 50° - 15 minutes

Press Start, automation begins

Sets PID to 30°
Waits till PID >= 30° (or close to, lets say 0.5 margin)
Starts timer
Timer goal reached
Sets PID to 40°
Waits till PID >= 40° (0.5 margin)
Starts timer
Timer goal reached
Sets PID to 50°
Waits till PID >= 50° (0.5 margin)
…

So basicly, instead of setting a time, setting a temp value based on a sensor and duration.
Add a basic start/pause/stop to it, this would safe me some timers, user errors and watching my brew."

or the one by Hellrazr from September 2020:

“Heya, not sure if there is a function like this allready. Is it possible to add a countdown timer widget. It doesent have to control anything, just to keep track of time passed. Maybe it could have a little alarm that can be configured when the timer reaches a defined setpoint.”.

An (audio) signal that can be placed at the end of a “block” would also be very helpful.

As I’ve seen, I’m by no means the only user who has this request.
Are there perhaps already options like this, and I just haven’t found them yet?

And I would be really thankful for information how this cam be done just using the Brewblox Software UI and Brewblox Spark 4 without touching the code which would request me to study IT and programming before.

Many thanks in advance for any information.

Kind regards,
Winfried

I think the original purpose of adding the Sequence block was to help automate mashing in lieu of a dedicated mashing widget. I’ve not used it for this but have for other fairly complicated processes and it is quite versatile (but not necessarily straight forward). You can essentially start and stop any other block type using sensor input and/or time duration. The sequence block includes a start/stop interface and a built in countdown timer. You can also make the strike temp and step duration variables that references the Variables block so the Sequence block doesn’t have to be edited for a new batch.

There are also countdown and stopwatch widgets available that can be added to a dashboard.

For an audio signal, you could trigger a buzzer connected to one of the Spark IO outputs from within the Sequence.