inkbird wifi home assistant

I hadn't seen much on this so I just wanted report on some automation attempts at temperature control.

Being a bit of a home automation nerd I already have a extensive (but far from 'complete') home automation setup using home assistant. So naturally I wanted to be able to monitor+control as much of the brewing process as possible. I could have rigged up an entirely automated temperature controller using thermometers and smart plugs, but then home assistant would have to be working for the temperature control to function. Given how much updating home assistant gets (1 release per month minimum), I figured that would be too risky.

So instead I got a ITC-308-wifi (Inkbird Digital Wireless Thermostat, ITC-308-WiFi Temperature Controller Heating Cooling Remote Control : Amazon.co.uk: Pet Supplies). Because I don't see why the chinese government needs to know my beer temperature, I also wanted to replace the firmware with something opensource and local (ie would continue to work if the Internet went down). So I reflashed with tasmota, using this guide as a reference: Tasmotize the ITC308 Wifi Temperature Controller

By far the toughest part for me was unsoldering the riser on which the TYWE3S sits, from the main board then soldering it back on again afterwards. Soldering isn't something I've done very much of, and there was much cursing. You can actually see some melted display in the photo where the side of the soldering iron touched the plastic.

But once complete I now have temperatures as read by the inkbird itself, and its actions (heating, cooling, off) recorded. I haven't yet tried to modify the target temperature via automation, but that is apparently possible, so you could, for instance set a target temperature schedule, or even automate a cold crash based on the SG readings from an ispindel or tilt

interesting project....though I'm not sure of your paranoia from the Chinese Government...i'm pretty sure they know everything about you thats they want to know already from any other source where data about you is stored.

I think there are other challenges if you want a totally automated remotely controlled setup so probably a project that will snowball quickly. E.g. if you remotely set to cold crash for example, then you need a way of isolation the airlock and feeding in CO2 to prevent suck back. Normally I'd pressurise my fermenter to 10psi or so to account for the contraction of the headspace.

hoppyscotty said:

interesting project....though I'm not sure of your paranoia from the Chinese Government...i'm pretty sure they know everything about you thats they want to know already from any other source where data about you is stored.

I think there are other challenges if you want a totally automated remotely controlled setup so probably a project that will snowball quickly. E.g. if you remotely set to cold crash for example, then you need a way of isolation the airlock and feeding in CO2 to prevent suck back. Normally I'd pressurise my fermenter to 10psi or so to account for the contraction of the headspace.

Click to expand...

WRT the chinese gov. I personally suspect they know very little about me, mostly because I'm just not that interesting, but also because I don't do facebook etc. Even on this forum my username is randomly generated so that linking public profiles becomes difficult. Its also not really about the Chinese gov, but about any entity hoovering up personal data for profit or gain. In this case the cloud service is Chinese (Tuya) hence the comment. I don't really care to be honest; its just a little rebellion.

Tasmotizing (tasmotering?) also removes the dependancy on a cloud service that could just go away at any point in time, change sufficiently to break the integration code, or suddenly cost money.

I don't suppose I'll actually do a remote cold-crash fwiw, it was just an example if what's possible once you get your sensors and control into home assistant (or similar). For instance when I was testing the inkbird it kept overshooting the target temperature when cooling, and then turning the heater on, which would clearly be idiotic if it were left like that. Googling suggested the solution to this was to attach the temperature probe to your vessel with insulation. With my data I now _know_ this has worked, because I can track the overshoot and the status (heat, cool) etc over time.

Nice (also excessive!) work. I'm a home tinkerer too (software developer by trade). I run a HA server that runs a variety of small things around the house and am going to connect my freshly ordered iSpindel to it when it arrives, with the option of that triggering a heat belt on the fermenter via a cheapo smart plug if I get around to it.

Hardware is normally where I stop, but I did upgrade by BT router to openWRT and that involved soldering a serial connection to the PCB!