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
