guypettigrew wrote: ↑Sat Jun 29, 2019 8:55 pm
Hi PeeBee
Back from holiday today and have just been reading your reports …
Hope you've had a good holiday!
I think I'm beginning to appreciate the reasons behind some of the recent batch of problems. I'm using a TiltPi to fetch the data and I don't think I'm calibrating it right, the result is I
am getting single point calibration which is no use. The phone is calibrated okay so is reading fine.
Which made me realise, although I had been unthinkingly presuming, you don't calibrate the Tilt, you calibrate the receiver (the mobile app or TiltPi, the Tilt device is only transmitting).
So I get the instructions out to calibrate the TiltPi … ah, there's the problem! There's no instructions! So I was guessing, and who knows what I was guessing but it wasn't right. I've now entered the calibration values as two separate space delimited lists and it seems to be reading the same as the 'phone now, but it's a geeky guess (what can I expect for "free" software, but I was pushing the TiltPi as a much better solution than the 'phone).
The gravity readings do get noisy when fermenting strong, but this is obviously CO2 clinging and releasing
So looking at the Google Docs graphs (pre-calibration):
The temperature is bouncing about a bit because of our "mini-heatwave" and having to fight with my cooling arrangements. I was critical of the manufactures claiming to have "0.1C" resolution, but those claims aren't from the manufacturer and probably come from confused ramblings of other users and retailers. The manufacturers only claim +/-0.5-0.6C or 1.0F. Shame Celsius is just a direct conversion of Fahrenheit (instead of rounding to the nearest 0.5C).
What does worry me is the tendency to "stick". On the graph it's happened at about 1.042 and again (briefly) after it was "freed" at about 1.035. The sticking must be due to yeast on the surface - the manufacturers claim that can't happen but they are talking about "foam" not claggy rafts of yeast.
But these two issues are okay (?) if you know they are happening.
I'm planning on another trial next week to test what I've learnt - different beer but same yeast (White Labs "Edinburgh Ale"). I'll guess you'll want this thing back after that. The new one of course not the old one, although perhaps the old one can be recovered from its "broken" status?.