integration with other brewing software/devices

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TrickyDick
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integration with other brewing software/devices

Post by TrickyDick »

Howdy,

I recently have been getting back into the homebrewing hobby after taking a break for several years.
I noticed my previously favorite software Beersmith 2.0 has been updated to 3.0. Many shortcomings still exist. I don't think the upgrade is worthwhile to me. I began looking into alternatives. Ideally multi-platform (MAC/PC) with files stored on NAS. Beersmith can't do all this.
I stumbled onto Brewfather, which can output JSON files and integrate with other software and hardware including the digital hydrometers (Tilt I believe).
I'm kind of a coding novice although in my youth has taken a programming class in college and been dabbling with computers most of my life, I am by no means highly knowledgable about coding and such.
Was pretty sure that the BCS uses json files and has me begging the question if I could get brewfather to output a json file that I can "load" into the BCS for each recipe? I figured that someone out there has probably already tried this. The main "brewfather" webpage has a video of a guy talking about all sorts of integration he is doing, although I don't think he uses a BCS.
Well lets hear from anyone please who has experience with this brewfather and or other integration.
I'm not entirely sure how to upload files to update my BCS firmware even. When I try to download some free apps for loading the files I get malware alerts.

TD
JonW
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Re: integration with other brewing software/devices

Post by JonW »

What programs give you malware alerts? Stuff from ECC/BCS?

The BCS has an open API that uses JSON data formats. It's actually pretty easy to control and/or read & write the BCS from the API. There are several programs on the forums here that folks have done. There's also the BCS backup/restore & recipe utility on Github that you could look at the code for.
TrickyDick
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Re: integration with other brewing software/devices

Post by TrickyDick »

I don't really know what an API is. That brewfather said it can work with beerxml format. Not sure if that is really the same thing here. Saw a portion of a podcast type video by an obviously more technologically advanced person than I am talking about all sorts of programming stuff that I didn't fully understand. I did recall him saying something about node-red which I looked into and it seems to devised and a method to allow different electronic components that may use different methods for communicate to enable and automate communication or data sharing when it would ordinarily not be possible. Wondering if that could work in the situation of BCS and Brewfather or not. Been working so much that I haven't really had much time to devote to investigating it all.
Moad
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Re: integration with other brewing software/devices

Post by Moad »

I'm not a developer but I understand what an API is and what it's used for (more sys admin background). You would need to write something to parse the output from brewfather in to something you could send to the BCS API to adjust temperatures and times.

I don't like the chances of someone doing this but would love for it to happen!
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