I'm not trying to be confrontational, but what are your expected equipment costs? Seems like $100 for software isn't too much in the grand scheme of things.I know this forum has a particular liking for BruControl. It seems great, but $100 is pretty far out of my price range for software. Any alternatives out there for arduino? General tools for basic UIs that others have used?
I'm not trying to be confrontational, but what are your expected equipment costs? Seems like $100 for software isn't too much in the grand scheme of things.
I think if you want open source it seems like raspberry pi is the way to go vs arduino. But I don't really know.
Is there anything approaching a full-on brew day controller with a respectable ui based on Arduino?
Seems unlikely to me given the limited memory...
Cheers!
Brucontrol needs more than just an Arduino, yes? Like, a host?
Cheers!
Last time I checked the software was free for single users and a pi zero.w is five bucks with another five bucks for a knock-off PCB. I bet you could put together a controller for under 50 bucksThanks, but that is for raspberry pi, not arduino.
Good luck in whatever softwareyou do decide to try,Not confrontational at all. Mostly a value of my time vs. money thing.
. . .
But From most of what I read the real value in brucontrol is that its actually stable and works without constantly having to fiddle and reset and having things go wrong in the middle of brewday
Just curious? What exactly are your goals? Full automation or just run some PIDs for kettles?
I don't want to get into details here, but I have a particularly weird use case, so I have to do a lot of bespoke coding regardless.
Sounds illegal! Lol. I'm sure you could automate just about anything with it. Homebrewery, grow house, whatever...
Heh, re-reading that definitely makes it sound like something a bit more...nefarious, but that's just what an illegal grow house operator would say . $100 doesn't break the bank, it just doubles my control panel build cost and has little added benefit to me personally. Plus, like many other brewers, I enjoy a DIY approach to these sorts of things. Sometimes I am willing to spend to make things easier, sometimes I am not. After all, I could just buy my beer like a normal human.
Yeah, I'm selling my old panel at well over 2x what I paid in parts for it. Absolutely helped push me towards a full brucontrol based build.Good luck in whatever softwareyou do decide to try,
But From most of what I read the real value in brucontrol is that its actually stable and works without constantly having to fiddle and reset and having things go wrong in the middle of brewday. Just something to consider but a lot of people that tried the often poorly supported freeware have switched to brucontrol to have a platform and support rather than continue to waste hours of their time trying to get everything to work...( Kind of reminds me of my home theater pc or FTA days). Consider that the cost of brucontrol with an arduino and rtd board interface module with boards is still about the cost of 3 ezboil units. Than when you consider all the additional things it can do it really becomes a value... Its tough when your going from an analog panel to this because you have all that obsolete hardware and holes in the panel... I just decided to start fresh myself and picked up components as I could afford them for my first brucontrol build. You could always try to sell your old panel and make some $$ to fund the new one. You might find the profit will help.
There are other things too like the rtd support that set brucontrol ahead of a lot of other current software solutions out there that im aware of.
Happy for you to join in. However, I don't really think I am sending mixed messages here, and am not sure why there seems to be a belief that I either have to be 100% all DIY all day (which doesn't even really make sense, nothing is 100% DIY), or 0% buy everything out of the box, especially since this is a definitionally somewhere between 0 and 100% DIY hobby.
I am willing to spend some sometimes to make my life easier when I don't want/need to DIY something. I want to automate, but I didn't make a computer control board starting from mining rare earth elements; I bought an arduino. I would be willing to spend (far, far less than $100) for something that might save me a bit of time coding, since I don't enjoy that part of the process quite as much, but would happily do that part when the trade-off is $100. That's entirely consistent.
Edit: Let me make this more explicit. If BruControl was $20, I would buy it. If I did not have very specific reasons why I am using an Arduino, I would have bought a raspberry pi and used craftbeerpi, which is free. I am also willing to bet that there are a lot of others in a similar boat who went the pi route specifically for that reason. $100 is a lot to ask when you are competing with free.
Again, I have no doubt that BruControl is an excellent polished product that is super useful. And I have no doubt that @BrunDog sticks by the product, nor that it is worth $100 or more for many many people. It just isn't for me.
I want to automate, but I didn't make a computer control board starting from mining rare earth elements; I bought an arduino.
Also, for what it's worth, I am pretty disappointed in this community. Of the 20 posts in this thread, maybe 4 or 5 were actual good faith efforts to help out.
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