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Category: Gear
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I recently had the opportunity to play around with an iSpindel device - DIY floating hydrometer. It took a little bit of trial and error, a lot of learning Python, and of course a generous about of beer, but I was able to get it to feed data into my BrewPi setup.  Yes, I haveseen the BrewPiless with it already integrated. As well as a few other implementations of it but all of them had two major drawbacks. First, I would need some more hardware. My current BrewPi runs on a VM on a server at home, and uses a super cheap Arduino Uno. Second, my BrewPi is fully functional for what I need, right now. So no delay in getting another batch fermenting. 

Are there some flaws in how I have it set up? Sure. but it is stable.   First, and biggest issue for me, is the graphing is slow on mobile devices after a couple days. I think it is the extra data points. Currently I ahve SG, Temp and battery plotted.  I plan on leaving only the SG in the database. After that I will see what else slows it down.   Next, it is a "manual" installation, in that there are a few changes that have to be made, and files copied manually. I just haven't written an install script yet.

So far, I have been extremely happy with the performance. Accuracy seems pretty good too considering the calibration on this was done rather quickly.   Below you can see a screenshot of a brew going right now.  Just looking at the graph I can tell my SG has been almost flat for a couple days.  No taking a sample to read, no opening the fermenter. Couple more days it can go into a keg.

Check it out at https://github.com/NFBrewingTech/BrewPi-iSpindel if you want to play around with it. Submit requests if you want anything added or changed. Currently only on the Legacy branch of BrewPi

 

BrewPi with iSpindel (iSpindel) data graphing