Any brewing software that needs to be written?

Hi Guys -

I’m a software developer, and a homebrewer. I know there are quite a few decent brewing log/database/etc pieces of software out there, but I was wondering if there is any other type of software needed for the homebrewer? I’m looking for a little side project to work on and for the life of me, I can’t think of anything decent to write. Suggestions? Ideas?

How about something to help keep track of yeast?

Keeping yeast from your batches is a great way to save money but I am finding it harder and harder to keep track of what came from what, how many times have I reused it etc etc

I did a temperature controller for a freezer. I used a “cheap” Raspberry Pi, in a custom case, with a couple of chips to connect to the mains-level relays and temperature probes, and a LCD display.

My temps get tracked over time; samples collected and logged every minute and I have a web page that plots graphs of beer and room temperature over time with heating and cooling times also plotted. It’s really neat to look at that graph, I can see it calling for heat less often, as the yeast starts to produce its own heat, and I can see when it’s starting to leave active phase as it needs more heat. I never expected to be able to see that so clearly. I can view and set temps from my iPad.

It was a fun project for a computer guy, but the “cheap” hardware cost way too much. When you factor in the “whoops, I burnt-out another part” I probably spent 2x the cost of a Johnson digital controller. There are other similar custom hardware items out there, BrewPi and Brew bit come to mind.

So anyway, a temperature controller like I did would be cool if instead of all that custom hardware some generic home-automation parts were used. Anyone upgrading their PC can repurpose their outgoing PC as the brains, and get some pretty advanced functionality for the cost of some appliance controllers and temp sensors.

BTW my Raspberry PI is a 700MHz single-core, it’s roughly equivalent to a 10-15 yo desktop PC. So literally any PC that still functions can handle this task.

[quote=“Brews-R-us”]How about something to help keep track of yeast?

Keeping yeast from your batches is a great way to save money but I am finding it harder and harder to keep track of what came from what, how many times have I reused it etc etc[/quote]

I am not at the point yet in my brewing habit to keep yeast, so I’m not sure what exactly you would need to store/track/analyze/etc in program to track your yeast. What all do you need to track? update? etc?