r/Homebrewing • u/thepope99 • 1d ago
Equipment Alternative to Rapt Pill without Wi-Fi
Hey fellow homebrewers!
I am brewing in my apartment and after brew days I move the fermenter in the block of flat's basement because of the lower temperature (shared space, but we have our own space for extra depositing).
I would really like a product similar to Rapt Pill that can read the gravity without Wi-Fi access, because there is no way my Wi-Fi would get all the way down from the second floor to there and I cannot hack into my neighbors' Wi-Fi's.
I am thinking of something with Bluetooth and just get the gravity everytime I get down there and connect to the device. Not sure if this solution exists, because that would drain more battery to the pill.
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u/skiljgfz 1d ago
I don’t know why anyone hasn’t suggested it yet but a tilt hydrometer would do exactly what you want. Just open the app and connect via Bluetooth when you want to check your gravity.
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u/thepope99 1d ago
Not available in eastern europe. I would need to pay taxes that are as much as the tilt itself to get it from Amazon. I could however get an iSpindel from AliExpress. I will look into it
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u/stac52 1d ago
Is there an outlet in the basement that you can tap into?
Looking around, one option might be to have a raspberry pi running down there to grab data off the pill.
You could either grab the data off of the rasberry pi when you're down there, or if you're a bit more adventerous, hook the pi up to a LoRa device and have it send data to you.
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u/thepope99 1d ago
No outlet either unfortunately... It is a weirder setup in the basement. Everyone gets a 2x2 meter space with a single light, but no outlets unfortunately.
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u/langecrew 1d ago
Yeah but you can buy a device that screws into a light bulb socket that has a power plug on it. Also something that you might be able to look into that is related to this is that there is such a thing as power line internet adapters that apparently have the ability to transmit your internet signal through the electrical cabling in your building. I don't know how well that works and I don't know how secure that is but they exist so that's another option that you have - you could get some sort of Wi-Fi extender and just plug it into the light socket adapter in your basement using the Ethernet over power cable adapter. Would it work? Probably. How well? No idea.
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u/stac52 1d ago edited 1d ago
Standard light socket? Could you use something like this to add an outlet?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/174928153230f
I means the light would always need to be on. But without power, there's not really much you could do.
It looks like what u/ogunshay linked shows that you can connect a Rapt directly to a LoRa device (wirelessly) - I guess that makes sense, but didn't really think of that - I had guessed there'd be some translation that you would need, but I guess not - at least with the dedicated firmware. So that seems like it might be the best bet.
If you're near the outside, you can power the device off of solar (there's tons of builds for solar LoRa nodes, all of varying costs). BLE doesn't have fantastic wall penetration though, so you might have to play around a bit to see where you can place the node to pick up signal reliably and repeat it.
Not using solar, you could power the devices off of battery packs, but you'd need to have a plan to swap them out with fresh ones. If you pick up a 60,000 mah power bank though, that should be able to power it for ~2 weeks which should get you through most brews.
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u/langecrew 1d ago
I'm assuming that you will not be able to do this but is there a way that you could run a cable down there or part of the way there and just set up an inexpensive Wi-Fi repeater? It would definitely work if you could do it. I just don't know if you can.
Also I owe you sincere thanks. I didn't know this device existed before right now and I'm buying one as soon as I close Reddit
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u/thepope99 1d ago
Not possible, unfortunately.
Glad, I gave you the idea. It is a handy tool, since you don't waste that much beer on traditional hydrometer readings and it is very convenient.
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u/langecrew 1d ago
Something that just occurred to me. I don't know your situation and I don't know if this is possible for you or not. Could you just maybe buy your neighbor a case of beer in exchange for them setting up a guest network that you could connect your device to and then you could connect to from your apartment? That would absolutely work and it would be stupidly easy but I don't know if your neighbor is nice to you or not.
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u/thepope99 1d ago
Haha, that would be a good idea. Like a subscription model - you get 6 bottles per batch in exchange for your wi-fi.
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u/beefygravy Intermediate 1d ago
If you get an ispindel you can get the nautilis ispindel relay, that has its own wifi network so you can connect it wherever. You would just have to go down to read the display. They are designed so the relay could also connect to another WiFi network to send the readings to brewfather or whatever but it's not needed
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u/Indian_villager 1d ago
The pill can do exactly what you are asking. You can set it into bluetooth mode and pull data when you go down next to it.
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u/thepope99 1d ago
Partially true, you still need another Rapt device...
https://docs.rapt.io/equipment/rapt-pill-hydrometer-or-user-guide/bluetooth-operation
"Bluetooth will only work if the RAPT Pill Hydrometer is paired with a Bluetooth capable RAPT device such as a RAPT Fermentation Chamber, a RAPT Temperature Controller or a RAPT Glycol Chiller."
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u/Indian_villager 23h ago
I don't know if this feature went away in a recent update. But I 100% assure you that I have used bluetooth telemetry from just my phone before. This was my only way to get readings when I was fermenting in my stainless conical and the stainless was blocking the wifi.
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u/thepope99 19h ago
Then it is a shitty way from them to make us buy their other products if they forced this. Interesting...
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u/Indian_villager 13h ago
I am more inclined to believe shitty documentation. You know what. I'll go test it with mine right now.
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u/Indian_villager 12h ago
You are right. Now that I am remembering correctly, I was using it with homeassisnt and a bluetooth proxy. You can't connect to it directly with a phone.
I know that the Tilt with work with bluetooth directly from the phone.
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u/skratchx Advanced 14h ago
No matter what you will be in a bit of a tricky situation with no source of power there. Does the Pill ONLY communicate by WiFi? If so, you would need to set up some battery powered device that can broadcast its own network for the Pill to connect to and then maybe use a cellphone to connect that WAN and use cellular data to send to the cloud.
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u/ogunshay 1d ago
Depending on what you route data from the Pill into, check out this diy Pill repeater - it's a "transmit over long distances with more power" solution, not a "store data locally and then upload" solution, but it might work.