Home Hacking and Automation: Home Brew Controller - 15th March

I'm aware that many things like the BrewPi exist, but I didn't want to overcomplicate things and use a Raspberry Pi plus extra hardware. I just wanted something simple that didn't include all the extras like heater/chiller and pump control (as I don't have all these things yet, just a few buckets and boilers)!

Primary Aim:

Monitor the temperature of

water/wort during a sparge
wort when cooling (after a boil)
wort when fermenting

locally (on an LCD screen)
remote via a web interface over WiFi (potentially with graphing) so I don't have to go out and check on it from time to time)

Secondary Aims:

Control things based on temperatures (so I don't have to go out to the garage to turn switches on/off)

The boiler (turn it off automatically after the 1-2 hour boil after hopping)
brewbelt (to keep the wort warm during fermentation in the winter)

Hardware (Parts list):

I already had most of these parts from previous electronics projects:

1x Nodemcu
1x DHT22
2x DS18B20 temperatue probes (on 3m cables)
1x LCD display 16x2 characters
4x Analog resistor ladder switches
1x 433Mhz RF transmitter (for mains sockets, safer and cheaper than wiring up my own mains relays for boilers)

Software

For circuit/breadboard diagrams I will probably be using fritzing. Recently they started charging a small fee for compiled downloads to support development, but you can still download and install it for free on a mac using homebrew 😁 (pun not intentional) with the command brew install --cask fritzing

For diagrams, I will probably be using this nodemcu part

https://github.com/roman-minyaylov/fritzing-parts/tree/master/esp8266-nodemcu-v3

And I found some good code for controlling the LCD menu

https://majicdesigns.github.io/MD_Menu/ and https://github.com/MajicDesigns/MD_Menu

Along with a library to read the switch inputs

https://github.com/MajicDesigns/MD_UISwitch https://majicdesigns.github.io/MD_UISwitch/class_m_d___u_i_switch___analog.html

I almost used this library https://tsibrov.blogspot.com/2020/09/LiquidCrystal-I2C-Menu.html but found the translated instructions a bit hard to understand.

Alternatively, I could just use BrewPiLess, but what would be the point in that?!

https://github.com/vitotai/BrewPiLess/blob/master/doc/HardwareGeneral.md

https://www.primetimebrewers.com/post/piless-brewpi