iSpindel Purchase

[Petrolhead]

I have just bought an assembled iSpindel off eBay for £40 inc. delivery which I thought was a good price and allows me to dip my toe in the digital hydrometer market without the expense of the Tilt. I appreciate that there is another thread on the iSpindel but it is fairly techie and I thought the experience of a non techie purchaser may be of interest.

As I say purchased it for £40 from a user name of "benpolley" on eBay, a good price I think, and immediately had the normal emails from eBay but also a link to the vendors own instructions so I could read up before delivery. I have seen complaints about the translation of the instructions from german but these appear extremely clear.

Delivery was today, earlier than promised, and whilst it was a bit bigger than expected it looks like a well built piece of kit.

I have just charged it, spot on instructions, and tomorrow if I have time I will set it up and report further.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

You might find these youtube videos useful...

Updating the firmware -
Calibrating -
Assembling -

 

[Petrolhead]

Thanks H.

Last night I connected the iSpindel to my laptop via a free account on something called Ubidots. I can't tell you much at this point apart from it was very quick and straight forward by following the instructions that came with the iSpindel. Later I will have to get this to report on how my brew is developing and I hope it is as simple as this.

I did however have a very interesting afternoon. Basically the iSpindel can be used straight from the box with a possibility of a small error if you are willing to accept this or you can spend some time calibrating it for more accuracy which I did.

Basically you get a vessel capable of floating the iSpindel, increase the SG in increments recording the SG with a hydrometer and also the recorded tilt angle from the iSpindel. You later use these results to calibrate the iSpindel.

I sat a saucepan on the hob with the intention of maintaining the water temperature but my first reading was 23 degrees and in the hour it took this hardly dropped.

I recorded the reading of the iSpindel, with a hydrometer and also my refractometer at eight points from plain water to just short of 1.070 when I ran out of sugar. A small point if you use 5.5 litres of water each increment of .010 is about 143g of sugar which 8 readings is about a kilo.

I actually found this an interesting exercise and I found the hydrometer and my very cheap refractometer matched to within .001 throughout the range. The hydrometer may gather a lot of dust going forward!

You then plug these readings directly into an online spreadsheet which gives you a formula to 'flash' into your iSpindel and make the correction. That's my next move.

A small point, the temperature reading started off a long way from the actual temperature but during the course of the exercise the difference narrowed considerably. I simply assume that this is because of the mass of the iSpindel and when it is continuously immersed in the wort the reading will be precise.

 

[Hew's Brews]

Very interesting :) Thanks for posting.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I'm supposed to be a 'techie' but I really struggled with Ubidots until I saw the light

 

[Petrolhead]

I haven’t really delved into it yet but I could broadly see how you customised the graphs recoded from the iSpindel.

I see Brewers Friend has a facility you link to iSpindle which I would like to do but I am a bit apprehensive.

I am about to do my first brew since the purchase, probably early next week, so I guess my next challenge is ensuring it has a good WiFi signal.

 

[kelper]

The temperature reading will take a long time to steady due to the plastic case and air inside. Probably an hour or so. Not really a problem in use but you would need to be patient when calibrating.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I am about to do my first brew since the purchase, probably early next week, so I guess my next challenge is ensuring it has a good WiFi signal.

I have been surprised at just how strong the signal is on my Ispindel. I have had it in my loft / workshop, connecting through two floors to the router on the ground floor, which is marginal even for a router. I have just had it connecting from the utility room stainless sink, whilst messing about with weighting it, to the router via two solid walls.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

The temperature reading will take a long time to steady due to the plastic case and air inside. Probably an hour or so. Not really a problem in use but you would need to be patient when calibrating.

The temperature on my iSpindel reads 1.5C higher than the actual temperature. There seems to not be any way to offset it.

 

[kelper]

The temperature on my iSpindel reads 1.5C higher than the actual temperature. There seems to not be any way to offset it.

Should have bought a Tilt!

 

[Petrolhead]

Last week I did a brew and transferred the wort to the FV. Great chance to use the iSpidle I thought but I failed at the first step due in no way to iSpindle.

I use 25L water carriers as FV's much like this:

I've used them for years with no problem, cleaning may be an issue for some but I have a big steam cleaner so no problems. Sadly the iSpindle didn't fit into the FV which stopped the trial in it's tracks, sadly. Later in the year I plan to have a look at my fermenting process and I am hoping to use a tall, glass fronted fridge with a couple of conical's inside but for now I plan to cut an appropriate sized hole for the iSpindle and seal it with tape.

On the weekend I transferred the brew into a Corny Keg which was being used as a secondary fermenter, tilted away from the beer out pipe to reduce trub when I transfer to the 'drinking' keg. I was interested to see how the iSpindle worked, not expecting much in a sort of Faraday's cage. The wifi signal in the brew shed is superb, and the iSpindle started recording readings as soon as it was turned on, sadly, when it was sealed into the keg and put into a closed fridge there was no signal whatsoever.

Later, I am going to put the wireless access point into the fridge just as an experiment but I don't expect much. I am going to give a little thought as to a work around, only because I like these problems, but at the moment I don't have any thoughts apart from a very Heath Robinson idea about clamping a bit of wire in the lid to act as a sort of aerial. Leakage could be an issue and I can't try this until I have decanted the brew into a new keg or bottles.

Remarkably good fun actually!!

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Remarkably good fun actually!!

Yes, great fun

Try the trick with coax, a passive antenna repeater. It just needs a bit of modern TV coax, you strip the outer shield back leaving just the end of the inner core poking out at either end of the coax, I think I read trimmed to 32mm. Make sure the inner is clear of the shield and over all length of coax as short as possible. One end goes inside the fridge, other end outside the fridge as high as possible.

 

[Petrolhead]

Well I made up another brew on Friday, formed a larger opening and popped the iSpindle in as I put it in my fermentation fridge.

Works a treat, I have enjoyed viewing the brew's progress on my computer, phone and iPad at present very happy with the purchase.

The gravity is shown on the Ubidots dashboard to two decimal places so I will see how that can be changed but I also fairly easily set up a single axis graph which gave the gravity to three places and is a lot more interesting to view.

I guess it is now time to play with Ubidots to get the graphs working well and also see if this can easily be linked to my Brewers Friend account.

 

[Degville]

Well I made up another brew on Friday, formed a larger opening and popped the iSpindle in as I put it in my fermentation fridge.

Works a treat, I have enjoyed viewing the brew's progress on my computer, phone and iPad at present very happy with the purchase.

The gravity is shown on the Ubidots dashboard to two decimal places so I will see how that can be changed but I also fairly easily set up a single axis graph which gave the gravity to three places and is a lot more interesting to view.

I guess it is now time to play with Ubidots to get the graphs working well and also see if this can easily be linked to my Brewers Friend account.

Maybe it’s just me but it took me an absolute age to work out how to get it to display to more than two decimal places . I thought it would be at the variable level but it’s at the profile settings for your user.

Mark

 

[Petrolhead]

I’m not sure if it was straight forward or more probably luck but I got there quite quickly.

At first I clicked on the gravity button and saw the line graph to gravity against time. Two decimal places and fairly useless but quite a thrill at the time.

I very quickly found the option to set up your own graph, called a dashboard (?) where the number of decimal places is a clear option.

I guess Ubidots can be considered separate from the iSpindle and being a fairly powerful tool is a learning curve of its own. I don’t think I want much more than a gravity/time line which I have. I use a brew fridge controlled by an Inkbird so I trust the temperature.

 

[Baldbrewer]

Hi , this may seem a stupid question but do I need to turn it off when not in use?
Will it remember the setting for Wi-Fi etc and auto connect?

Thanks !

 

[Cheyne_brewer]

Hi , this may seem a stupid question but do I need to turn it off when not in use?
Will it remember the setting for Wi-Fi etc and auto connect?

Thanks !

Yes. All the settings are safely stored in the device, no need to reload and reconnection is instant when turned on again. If you think about it, the battery would die anyway…

 

[Baldbrewer]

thanks Cheyne_brewer! no brainer really lol just wanted to be sure lol