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The "Raspbeery" Pi Project

Former Member

Hello everyone!

A few months back, myself and a friend of mine both purchased keg fridges. We both brew our own beer and quickly came to the realization that putting beer into kegs is definitely a lot easier and less time consuming than bottling beer. But then the other problems quickly arose, like how much beer was in that keg and how many pints have you poured, etc. Which led the to Raspbeery Pi Project.

 

The outline of the project is this:

1. Know how full the keg is at all times

2. Know how many pints have been poured

3. Know how cold the beer is

4. Have a graphical representation with touchscreen controls showing all the above info mounted on the tap or tower.

5. Know when someone has poured a beer without permission (I.e. The teenager that opened a previously sealed bootle of whiskey and claimed it wasn't him)

 

Having done a few projects with arduino I knew the arduino would not be able to do the graphical components I have in mind.

So I've turned my attention to the Raspberry Pi. I've got all the hardware ordered that I think I'm going to need except for the touchscreen. I can't decided whether I want to use a 3.5" or 4" screen. My original plan was to build a custom tap handle with the Pi and the touchscreen mounted inside it. But I'm not opposed to mounting it on the beer tower either.

 

I ordered a 1/2" flow valve to mount inline on the hose between the keg and the tap.

I also ordered waterproof temp sensor and a 2steel ball tilt switch. I'll leave the temp sensor in the body of the fridge and the tilt switch will be mounted in the tap handle.

 

I've also ordered a wifi adapter so that I can tweet when the tap has been pulled without permission. And the whole thing will be based off the Raspberry Pi A+ as it draws less power and is in the smaller form.

 

Now here is where I need help.

I have never done any graphical programming before and don't know anything about Python.

I can't seem to find any starting tutorials for graphical programming. That work the way I'm going to be using things. Everything seems to be backwards. As in press a touchscreen button and it turns on an LED, not pull handle and it starts to count how much beer is flowing And then tell me how much is left in the keg.

 

Can anyone direct me to the best program for making up a gui this type of project?

And what OS should I start with loading on to the Pi?

 

Any other comments and suggestions are welcome as well.

Thanks!

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  • 0

    It's  a bit late now so this advice would benefit new projects more than your current one.

    I think the Pi and its Linux OS are way over the top for this kind of application (you'll get bogged down in fighting the OS all the time - compare the ease of connecting  a cheapo pulse output flow sensor to a typical micro controller coded direct in C, with the difficulty of doing the same with a PI and Linux.)

     

    The simplest route would be something like an Arduino (or better an ST Discovery or Nucleo board) with an FTDI FT800 based display. The FT800 is a graphics engine and display controller on one chip - FTDI do little dev kits with a display, the FT800 and a touch screen controller all ready and sorted and connectable to your micro via SPI.

    This combination would be coded in C but the FT800 takes care of a lot of the graphics burden.

     

     

    MK

Reply
  • 0

    It's  a bit late now so this advice would benefit new projects more than your current one.

    I think the Pi and its Linux OS are way over the top for this kind of application (you'll get bogged down in fighting the OS all the time - compare the ease of connecting  a cheapo pulse output flow sensor to a typical micro controller coded direct in C, with the difficulty of doing the same with a PI and Linux.)

     

    The simplest route would be something like an Arduino (or better an ST Discovery or Nucleo board) with an FTDI FT800 based display. The FT800 is a graphics engine and display controller on one chip - FTDI do little dev kits with a display, the FT800 and a touch screen controller all ready and sorted and connectable to your micro via SPI.

    This combination would be coded in C but the FT800 takes care of a lot of the graphics burden.

     

     

    MK

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