Starting a Brewblox journey (sanity check after installation process)

[matdias]

After using brewpi for a couple of years (Spark 2) I decided to give Brewblox a go since I’m on vacation. Actually I’ve been planning on this for quite some time because I bought a second mini fridge and Brewblox includes the possibility of controlling both fridges.

Before the second mini fridge I used to serve and ferment in the same chamber (or kegerator I guess).

I bought a new SD card and followed the Getting Started instructions (almost) without any problems (smooth process btw). The only thing I needed to change from my old setup was moving to Wifi connection to the brewpi, no big deal.

I wonder if the USB discovery problems I faced were related to another USB device I have connected for Raspberrypints (an Arduino UNO).

Anyway, after some time working in the “Fridge mode” (I only set up the first fridge as it’ll will work as a kegerator from now on) I’d like to do some sanity check and see if you guys have any tips for fine tuning.

Here’s my dashboard:

Here’s the cool crazy PID graph:

And here’s the fridge temp (I can’t recall if I was seeing the same wide swing with brewpi):

Another thing I noticed is that the actuator graph is a bit weird (at least for me) since it shouldn’t plot intermediary values (should only plot 1 or 0 as I see it, so no diagonal lines):

One thing I miss is the clock showing how much time the actuator was on or off on the LCD display.

Anyway, thanks for the enormous effort you guys put on this software, I really appreciate it.

edit: Here where I live it’s warm almost the entire year, that’s why I only set up the Cooling actuator (Resfriar).

[Bob_Steers]

I’m not an expert on configuring the system (I just write the software), but can answer some of your points.

Your fridge temp variation looks very dramatic, but its actual variance is less than 1C.

Intermediate values for your actuator state are a side effect of how we set up the data logging system. If you display longer periods (>1h), you get a downsampled (averaged) result of the data set. It’s a bit weird, but we felt that making our system really flexible was worth the tradeoff.

[Elco]

I think your fridge temp is tracking perfectly. It really doesn’t get better than this.

The fridge turns on for a minimum time (short bursts is ineffective and bad for the compressor) and you have a PWM period of 30 or 40 min.
Each time the fridge turns on it brings the temp from +0.5 to -0.5 around the setpoint, for a perfect average.

[matdias]

Thanks a bunch guys.

On to the next fridge now.

[matdias]

Is there a way to reset the OneWire sensors (or some sort of command to manually list all the connected sensors addresses)?

I will be using the ambient temp for another purpose but since I increased the cable size and reconnected it’s not being detected anymore.

[Elco]

The firmware only lists addresses that are not already configured as a block.

If you have deleted the blocks on the service page (not the dashboard widgets), it should show up again if you click discover blocks in the top left spark/system block.

If it does not show up, you might have made a mistake with the wiring. While you are rewiring things, power the Spark from USB so you don’t have 12V on any of the pins to minimize the risk of damaging things.

[matdias]

As 90% of the OneWire sensors problems this one was also wiring related:

After rewiring both sensors were detected.
Thanks again.

[matdias]

Finished the second fridge today. I need to do some testing (with water), but right now everything looks great:

[cschmaltz]

@matdias After I get all my relays tested and working, I would definitely like to sync up with you about setup / configuration, just to improve my knowledge of the software and getting it configured.