BCS 4.0 Public Beta 1

[microbusbrew]

1. What does the "config migrator" do?
2. Do you just run it and it upgrades the firmware itself?
3. If it does not do the Firmware Update, what order do you upgrade?
4. If you run it and want to revert to 3.7.1, can you do that?

1. Back up your 3.x config then do the firmware upgrade using the standard firmware upgrade process.
Once upgraded, use the config migrator tool to "restore" your configuration to the 4.0 box. This will automatically restore all the named inputs, outputs, temp probe coefficients, etc. as you had them configured in the 3.x box.
2. No, see #1
3. See #1
4. Per brahn's post, yes you can revert back to 3.x

A couple things I had problems with. I couldn't get the config migrator to work in Chrome. It did work once I fired up IE11. It looks like it doesn't differentiate between the 460 and the 462, so if you're using it on the 462 you'll see some failures when it attempts to update the additional inputs/outputs (since they don't exist on the 460). I also backed up my 3.x processes...I'm not sure if you're supposed to be able to import them, but I wasn't able to from IE or Chrome. I only have two processes so it wasn't a big deal to re-enter them. I'm going to try a dry run today just to make sure everything is working as expected.

[JonW]

i might give this a try but i normally use a win button to progress. Think it has to be time to wire up a button on the panel

Win buttons are used to jump straight to a new state. Since all the states are shown in the process box, you can simply jump right to the state there. Because of the direct state access, Win buttons had become redundant and as such were removed.

[bcrawfo2]

I often switched to manual mode for my brew phase so I could adjust the duty cycle on my element.
With manual mode going away...what will others do?
I guess I could make states for different duty cycles?
I do 5 and 10 gallon batches...I'm fairly new at BCS, but logic tells me that I will need a different duty cycle.

[JonW]

I often switched to manual mode for my brew phase so I could adjust the duty cycle on my element.
With manual mode going away...what will others do?
I guess I could make states for different duty cycles?
I do 5 and 10 gallon batches...I'm fairly new at BCS, but logic tells me that I will need a different duty cycle.

You can edit the state and the duty cycle will change in the running process. If you only need a couple of different duty cycles, using a couple of states could also be good for this.

This might be something that could be looked at in the future to be able to adjust on the fly just like the temp setpoint adjust options.

Because of the new method of editing items in 4.0 is instantaneous without having to "apply" or restart processes, the manual mode options really began to lose their value (and it took up a lot of resources to duplicate what was already in the process/state UI).

[brahn]

A couple things I had problems with. I couldn't get the config migrator to work in Chrome. It did work once I fired up IE11. It looks like it doesn't differentiate between the 460 and the 462, so if you're using it on the 462 you'll see some failures when it attempts to update the additional inputs/outputs (since they don't exist on the 460). I also backed up my 3.x processes...I'm not sure if you're supposed to be able to import them, but I wasn't able to from IE or Chrome. I only have two processes so it wasn't a big deal to re-enter them. I'm going to try a dry run today just to make sure everything is working as expected.

Strange, I do nearly all my development in Chrome, so all the utilities have been tested using Chrome. It does detect whether you are running a 460 or 462 and whether the config is for a 460/462. If you try to restore a 462 config to a 460 it will warn you and you will see some failures. It's nothing to worry about, it should still work fine.

The migration tool detects process files as well and will migrate them to 4.0 as well, you just load them the same way as you did the system file.

[brahn]

i might give this a try but i normally use a win button to progress. Think it has to be time to wire up a button on the panel

Win buttons are used to jump straight to a new state. Since all the states are shown in the process box, you can simply jump right to the state there. Because of the direct state access, Win buttons had become redundant and as such were removed.

We also added "Wait for Input" on an exit condition. It doesn't actually exit the state, but it makes the state flash yellow in the UI so you know that it's waiting for you to do something.

[brahn]

I often switched to manual mode for my brew phase so I could adjust the duty cycle on my element.
With manual mode going away...what will others do?
I guess I could make states for different duty cycles?
I do 5 and 10 gallon batches...I'm fairly new at BCS, but logic tells me that I will need a different duty cycle.

If you just need to switch between 5 and 10 gallon batches, I would configure it and then save each configuration in a different backup file. On brew day, just restore the one for the size batch you're doing that day.

[bcrawfo2]

I often switched to manual mode for my brew phase so I could adjust the duty cycle on my element.
With manual mode going away...what will others do?
I guess I could make states for different duty cycles?
I do 5 and 10 gallon batches...I'm fairly new at BCS, but logic tells me that I will need a different duty cycle.

If you just need to switch between 5 and 10 gallon batches, I would configure it and then save each configuration in a different backup file. On brew day, just restore the one for the size batch you're doing that day.

Thanks. I also looked at the recipe utility. It doesn't read settings that are duty cycle...so that wasn't an option. Will play with it and see how others comment on similar problem.

[brahn]

Thanks. I also looked at the recipe utility. It doesn't read settings that are duty cycle...so that wasn't an option. Will play with it and see how others comment on similar problem.

Adding support for changing the duty cycle in the recipe utility sounds like a good idea.

[microbusbrew]

Strange, I do nearly all my development in Chrome, so all the utilities have been tested using Chrome. It does detect whether you are running a 460 or 462 and whether the config is for a 460/462. If you try to restore a 462 config to a 460 it will warn you and you will see some failures. It's nothing to worry about, it should still work fine.

The migration tool detects process files as well and will migrate them to 4.0 as well, you just load them the same way as you did the system file.

Cool thanks for clarifying. I wonder if I have something configured wrong in chrome or maybe an outadted plugin because I've had compatibility issues on a couple sites.