Running Multiple Chambers on the Same RaspberryPi

You may wish to run more than one chamber on a single Raspberry Pi. As of release 0.5.1 this is supported with the normal install tools.

You will need an Arduino per chamber, configured appropriately.

Clean Install Required

Installing a multi-chamber system is only possible on the initial install. If you have a current single-chamber setup you must remove it and reinstall from the beginning. If you need to uninstall you can either start over with a clean SD card and fresh install of Raspbian (preferred) or try the uninstaller:

curl -L uninstall.brewpiremix.com | sudo bash

Follow the instructions on the screen.

Multi-Chamber Installation

Starting with a clean system, run the standard installer:

curl -L install.brewpiremix.com | sudo bash

Now just follow the instructions on the screen. The important choice comes during this part of the install:

If you would like to use BrewPi in multi-chamber mode, or simply not use the
defaults for scripts and web pages, you may choose a name for sub directory and
devices now.  Any character entered that is not [a-z], [0-9], - or _ will be
converted to an underscore.  Alpha characters will be converted to lowercase.
Do not enter a full path, enter the name to be appended to the standard path.

Enter device/directory name or hit enter to accept the defaults.
[<Enter> = Single chamber only]:

This is where you must enter a directory name to use, for instance “chamber1”. No spaces or special characters may be used. After this entry you will be asked for a friendly name for your chamber to be displayed in menus and on the web page:

Now enter a friendly name to be used for the chamber as it will be displayed.
Capital letters may be used, however any character entered that is not [A-Z],
[a-z], [0-9], - or _ will be replaced with an underscore. Spaces are allowed.

[<Enter> = $CHAMBER]:

You may use spaces and capitalization here such as “Chamber 1” however special characters are not allowed.

Arduino Selection

During the install, if there is only one Arduino the script will create a udev rule for that controller. If more than one is present, a list of Arduino serial numbers connected will be displayed.

Keeping track of serial numbers may be somewhat unwieldy. To avoid this, plug a single new Arduino in for each install pass. An Arduino which has previously been configured for a different chamber will be ignored.

Adding Additional Chambers

For each additional chamber desired, simply plug in a new Arduino and re-run the install.sh script in the tools directory:

sudo ~/brewpi-tools-rmx/install.sh

Multi-Chamber Index

A link to a multi-chamber index will be created in the root of the web directory. The chambers will be in a sub-directory underneath the root. The multi-chamber index will allow a terse view of each configured chamber’s status, and you can view the full chamber web page by clicking the corresponding LCD.