The BrewBit

[Jimmy]

For those who are interested, got this in an email addressed to the club:

Hello!

We found your email address on the AHA homebrew club registry, and
were wondering if you could help us out.

We’re are a group of homebrewers and geeks and we are building a
wireless sensor to measure the fermentation cycle from inside your
fermentor.

We’re calling it the BrewBit.

We’ve put together a short survey to help us better understand how you
brew and how BrewBit might fit in.

Please help us help you brew better beer by taking our survey at the link below:

http://bit.ly/OtsnTV" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If you would share this with your club, we would really appreciate it.

Thank you!

BrewBit team - Brian, Nick & Misha

[HoweFox]

I did the survey. The device sounds kind of neat. Would be cool to track SG and temp over time.

[AllanMar]

This seems similar to The Beer Bug (http://www.thebeerbug.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) which has been talked about for like 2 years, although they now seem close to actually releasing something. $199 is a bit steep tho, at $99 it might be interesting.

[ryantr0n]

The beer bug guy released a video this week o.O

It was just him talking about his stout recipe, but the second part of the vid will be uploaded soon and I can only assume it has new info about the beer bug.

I don't care who ends up making one, but it's definitely something that I'd look into if the price and accuracy are right.

[AllanMar]

His videos are pretty odd, he usually just rambles on about how great an idea it is without any details. I remember looking into it like 2 years ago.. Back then it was "about to be released" also. Although from the videos it looks like they actually have some finished looking prototypes now. Will be interested to hear some more details. The storing information and bluetooth are pretty good ideas, leave it in the fridge then just walk up and connect with your smartphone to download the data.

[sleepyjamie]

id like to see it open sourced so people can build their own.

[Graham.C]

The gravity is the part I can't figure out, other wise I could probably build one to monitor environmental variables. The b***hy part is power and price. The units I could build would probably run around $100-5000, depending on what you want to record, how, and in what detail. It would be easy to feed the glass temp of your carboy into a data-logger or a old computer to control temperatures in your fermentation chamber. To actually record within the fermenting carboy itself would raise sanitation issues or battery issues, depending on how its done. Any type of wireless device uses a tonne of juice and wires are just a pain to keep clean. In the lab we have some submersible probes that communicate via light pulses that might work and are low drain, but the glass might distort the signal. I am really interested to see how these guys deal with it, then maybe I can mimic it for the club.

[AllanMar]

I don't know if open source would help too much (at least not cheaper). The manufacturing here would likely make it too difficult/expensive to produce on a small scale. It appears for the SG they are just essentially using a hydrometer and measuring the position (there are some sketchy details around I've read). Attempting to DIY this would not be easy nor cheap, at least without access to plastic molding/machining and other advanced manufacturing.

I thought about trying to make something myself, but it just didn't seem worth attempting if there was something coming out eventually. My guess is its using something similar to a LVDT, and by manufacturing with plastic they can keep the float separate. I also expect they would be custom making the coil/core for the LVDT, and a lot of experimentation would be required to calibrate.

I'm sure it could be copied, but for less then $199 all said and done I think would be a struggle. It's like if Toyota open sourced the Corolla, you couldn't DIY it for less then you could buy it. That said, open source would have all kinds of other benefits, but I don't think building one yourself would be one of them.

[Graham.C]

Good call, unless of course your doing it FOR the DIY aspect.

[hebnern]

Hey guys,

This is Nick from the BrewBit team. Thanks for taking the time to fill out the survey, the results are really helping us to figure out which features we need to focus on for this product.

I was very interested in the discussion, so I wanted to take a moment to respond.

The question of open source is very interesting. We did not plan to open source the hardware/firmware for the reason that AllanMar brought up: it would be cost prohibitive for individuals to build one anyway. Indeed, the whole reason that we started the company is that we wanted this device to exist so we could use it to improve our own brewing, but we knew that the only way to make it for a reasonable price would be to find a big group of people to help us order parts in quantities. We are not some huge corporation trying to suck homebrewers dry, we are just three homebrewers and nerds trying to make a tool that we genuinely want to use. We are looking for partners that will help us to realize this dream!

That said, we are avid users and staunch believers in open source hardware and software, and we will have to discuss how open sourcing the various parts of the project would affect our strategy. We had planned from the start to, at the very least, provide an open API which would allow you to access the data coming out of the sensor and integrate it into your own projects.

Anyway, as I said, we are just three guys trying to make this product a reality. We are planning to raise the money for this project on KickStarter, so if you think that it is as cool as we do, please help us out by sharing it with your friends/family/anyone else that will listen. The more backers we get, the more likely we are to succeed!

In the mean time, you can keep in touch with us by checking out our facebook page, twitter feed, and website. (mods: is it ok to post links to these? I keep getting banned from forums because the mods think I am spamming. I am just trying to have a discussion and get feedback!) Sign up on our mailing list to receive occasional updates on our progress and when we launch.

Thanks BrewNosers! Keep brewing awesome beer!

[RubberToe]

Hi Nick!

I think this product is awesome and would love to monitor my fermentors this way, especially since I have a server rack just a few feet away.

We had planned from the start to, at the very least, provide an open API which would allow you to access the data coming out of the sensor and integrate it into your own projects.

This. I'd integrate it into some nice MRTG / RRD tool style graphs. One could set up alarms and notifications too (exceeds set temperature, reached desired FG, etc).

I'm looking forward to it and hope it becomes an affordable reality.

-Rob

[hebnern]

Yeah, we have similar ideas for the web service too. Alerts for temperature and gravity would be awesome. And of course historical fermentation profiles with tools to compare them. Lots of fun avenues to explore!

[Graham.C]

The question of open source is very interesting. We did not plan to open source the hardware/firmware for the reason that AllanMar brought up: it would be cost prohibitive for individuals to build one anyway. Indeed, the whole reason that we started the company is that we wanted this device to exist so we could use it to improve our own brewing, but we knew that the only way to make it for a reasonable price would be to find a big group of people to help us order parts in quantities. We are not some huge corporation trying to suck homebrewers dry, we are just three homebrewers and nerds trying to make a tool that we genuinely want to use. We are looking for partners that will help us to realize this dream!

That said, we are avid users and staunch believers in open source hardware and software, and we will have to discuss how open sourcing the various parts of the project would affect our strategy. We had planned from the start to, at the very least, provide an open API which would allow you to access the data coming out of the sensor and integrate it into your own projects.

Sounds like a good thing to me. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us. I for one am very interested in your product. I wasn't trying to be an ass above, I just love geeking out on the DIY.