Cloud Service Setup

Once your Tiltbridge has completed the Initial Setup process it is ready to begin scanning for Tilt Hydrometers and relay their gravity readings to the cloud. At the moment, TiltBridge supports a number of cloud service targets for this data:

Setting up TiltBridge for Fermentrack

The TiltBridge was designed by the primary author of Fermentrack and is designed with Fermentrack support in mind. In most cases, your TiltBridge can be linked to a single Fermentrack installation from directly within the Fermentrack app as part of the “Add Gravity Sensor” workflow. The configuration can also be re-sent to TiltBridge by clicking the “Update TiltBridge Automatically” button from the “Manage Sensor” page for the Tilt Hydrometer linked to the TiltBridge.

Adding the TiltBridge to Fermentrack

  1. Connect to your Fermentrack installation and log in (if necessary)
  2. From the Device menu choose Add Gravity Sensor
  3. On the resulting page, choose Tilt Hydrometer and then select the connection type TiltBridge
  4. Click the Add New TiltBridge link. Fermentrack will automatically scan for TiltBridge devices on your network.
  5. If your TiltBridge device appears, click the “Add” button. Fermentrack will attempt to complete the remaining setup steps automatically. Proceed to Adding Tiltbridge-connected Tilts to Fermentrack
  6. If your TiltBridge device is not in the list you will need to add it manually. In the form at the bottom of the page, enter the mDNS ID you selected during Initial Setup and enter a name by which Fermentrack will identify your TiltBridge.
  7. Click the Create TiltBridge button. Fermentrack now knows to expect your TiltBridge, but you will need to finish the setup on the TiltBridge manually.

If you need to manually configure the TiltBridge

If Fermentrack was not able to automatically configure your TiltBridge (either because the automatic configuration failed or because you created the TiltBridge manually) you will need to manually set the Fermentrack URL on the TiltBridge settings page.

  1. Identify the IP address of your Fermentrack installation
  2. On a device connected to the same network as the TiltBridge, navigate to http://tiltbridge.local/ (replace tiltbridge in this URL with the mDNS name you set during initial setup)
  3. Click the Settings link at the top of the dashboard
  4. Choose the Target Settings tab and then select Fermentrack/BrewPi-Remix Settings
  5. In the Target URL field enter http://<fermentrack_ip_address>/tiltbridge/ and click Update

Fermentrack and TiltBridge are now configured to properly communicate. You can now set up Tilts connected using TiltBridge in Fermentrack.

Adding TiltBridge-connected Tilts to Fermentrack

Once the TiltBridge and Fermentrack are configured to communicate, you can add the Tilt hydrometers to Fermentrack that will be pushed via the TiltBridge.

  1. Connect to your Fermentrack installation and log in (if necessary)
  2. From the Device menu choose Add Gravity Sensor
  3. On the resulting page, choose Tilt Hydrometer and then select the connection type TiltBridge
  4. Select the TiltBridge you just set up
  5. Enter the name, temp format, and color, and click Create Sensor

Congratulations - your Tilt will now send gravity readings to Fermentrack.

Setting up TiltBridge for BrewPi Remix

Tiltbridge will operate natively with BrewPi Remix. Tiltbridge is configured to push to BrewPi Remix by first configuring Tiltbridge to forward Tilts to BrewPi Remix, and then for BrewPi Remix to log the appropriate colors.

Adding the TiltBridge to BrewPi Remix

  1. Identify the IP address of your BrewPi Remix installation
  2. On a device connected to the same network as the TiltBridge, navigate to http://tiltbridge.local/ (replace tiltbridge in this URL with the mDNS name you set during initial setup)
  3. Click the Settings link at the top of the dashboard
  4. Choose the Target Settings tab and then select Fermentrack/BrewPi-Remix Settings
  5. In the Fermentrack/BrewPi-Remix Settings field enter http://<brewpi_remix__ip_address>//brewpi-api.php and click Update

BrewPi Remix and TiltBridge are now configured to communicate appropriately. You can now log Tilts through TiltBridge in BrewPi Remix.

Note: If you have BrewPi Remix configured in multi-chamber mode, the same Tiltbridge configuration applies. The single URL will forward to all chambers. You must, however, set each chamber’s config.cfg with the corresponding Tilt color.

Adding TiltBridge-connected Tilts to BrewPi Remix

Once the TiltBridge and BrewPi Remix are configured to communicate, you can add the Tilt hydrometers that will be pushed via the TiltBridge to BrewPi Remix.

  1. Connect to your Pi with ssh and login
  2. Edit your config file (sudo nano /home/brewpi/settings/config.cfg)
  3. Add a line at the bottom of this file for the color you would like to report (tiltColor = Yellow)
  4. Save and exit (Ctrl-X, y)
  5. Restart the BrewPi Remix Daemon for the changes to take effect (sudo systemctl restart brewpi)

Congratulations - your Tilt will now send gravity readings to BrewPi Remix.

Setting up TiltBridge for Brewers Friend

With a premium Brewers Friend account, you can store temperature and gravity readings from your Tilt Hydrometer as part of your brew logs. After you set up your TiltBridge to push to Brewers Friend, it will create stream devices for each of the detected Tilts which can then be subsequently attached to your brew logs. To comply with rate limits placed by Brewer’s Friend, data is first sent about 1 minute after startup, and subsequently no more than once every 15 minutes.

Note

Due to ESP32 hardware limitations, all connections to Brewers Friend are done over HTTP

Configuring the TiltBridge for Brewers Friend

To configure TiltBridge to use Brewer’s Friend, you will need to obtain your Brewer’s Friend API key and provide it to TiltBridge.

  1. Go to Brewers Friend and log in to your account
  2. Click the Profile button in the upper right, and click Integrations
  3. Copy the API key (not one of the URLs) to your clipboard
  4. On a device connected to the same network as the TiltBridge, navigate to http://tiltbridge.local/ (replace tiltbridge in this URL with the mDNS name you set during initial setup)
  5. Click the Settings link at the top of the dashboard
  6. Choose the Target Settings tab and then select Brewers Friend
  7. In the Brewers Friend API Key field paste the API key you copied earlier and click Update

Note

The first data “push” will be attempted within 10 seconds of the key first being entered, but due to rate limits it may take up to 15 minutes for data to first appear in Brewer’s Friend.

Testing Brewers Friend

Once the Brewer’s Friend API key is provided, the TiltBridge will begin transmitting gravity data once every 15 minutes. Following the first data transmission, you can easily check in Brewer’s Friend to see if the data was received.

  1. Go to Brewers Friend and log in to your account
  2. Click the Profile button in the upper right, and click Devices
  3. In the Device Settings pane click Show All (to the right of All Brew Sessions)
  4. All Tilt devices should appear in the list as Stream devices and will be identified by their color

Note

Per Brewer’s Friend guidelines, data is only pushed once every 15 minutes.

Setting up TiltBridge for Google Sheets

Similar to TiltPi or the Tilt Hydrometer app, TiltBridge supports logging to Google Sheets. Setting up Google Sheets is more involved than either Fermentrack or Brewers Friend, but provides a free, easily accessible cloud data service.

Preparing Google Sheets to Receive Data

The first step in Google Sheets integration is preparing Google Sheets to receive the data. Google Sheets requires the use of a Gmail or Google Apps for Domains account. This preparation step only needs to be done once per Google Account and once complete can be used with multiple Tilts, TiltBridges, and beer logs.

  1. Open the Tilt Cloud App for TiltBridge on Google Sheets. If prompted to login, log into your Gmail or Google Apps for Domains account.
  2. As prompted, go to the File Menu, and select Make a Copy
  3. Enter a name for this sheet (it will be the master sheet to coordinate all your beer logs) and click OK
  4. The copy you just made will open in a new window. Go to the Tools menu and select Script Editor

This will then open the Google Script editor. Before you can begin logging to Google Sheets, you need to “publish” the script that will receive the incoming data. To do so, you can follow these instructions (which are the same as those at the top of the window that appears):

  1. Go to the Deploy menu and select New Deployment
  2. In the dialog that pops up, choose Web App on the left. If you do not see Web App, click the gear icon next to Select Type and ensure Web App is checked.
  3. Enter description as “TiltBridge Google Sheets” (or whatever you prefer).
  4. Ensure Execute As is set to “Me” and Who Has Access is set to “Anyone”
  5. Click Deploy
  6. Click Authorize Access. A new dialog will pop up. Choose your Google account.
  7. Second dialog may appear indicating “Google hasn’t verified this app”. If it does, click Advanced and then select Go to Tilt Cloud Template for TiltBridge (unsafe)
  8. A dialog box with permission requests will appear. Select Allow.
  9. The new Deployment summary appears. Copy the URL under Web App - the URL should end in /exec

This URL is the URL you will need to paste into the Google Script URL field on the settings page of your TiltBridge (below).

Configuring the TiltBridge for Google Sheets

Once you have prepared Google Sheets to receive data pushed by the TiltBridge, you will need to update a handful of settings on the TiltBridge itself so that it knows where to send the data.

  1. On a device connected to the same network as the TiltBridge, navigate to http://tiltbridge.local/ (replace tiltbridge in this URL with the mDNS name you set during initial setup)
  2. Click the Settings link at the top of the dashboard
  3. Choose the Target Settings tab and then select Google Sheets
  4. In the Google Script URL field paste the Google Script URL you made note of during the preparation step above
  5. Enter your Gmail (or Google Apps) email address in the Google Script Email field
  6. Click Update
  7. Click the General Settings tab
  8. Ensure the correct time zone offset is entered, and click Update if needed.

Your TiltBridge should now be configured to send data to Google Sheets. To begin logging a Tilt you will need to enter a sheet name for the data to be logged to.

Logging a Beer with TiltBridge and Google Sheets

After configuring the TiltBridge each Tilt your TiltBridge detects can be individually logged to its own sheet on Google Sheets. To enable logging, you will need to specify a sheet name in TiltBridge. If this sheet does not exist on Google Sheets it will be created. If the sheet does exist, new data points will be appended to it.

  1. On a device connected to the same network as the TiltBridge, navigate to http://tiltbridge.local/ (replace tiltbridge in this URL with the mDNS name you set during initial setup)
  2. Click the Settings link at the top of the dashboard
  3. Choose the Target Settings tab and then select Google Sheets
  4. Type a name for the Google Sheet to which you want to log data points in the appropriate Tilt Sheet Name field and click Update

Once this is complete, your Tilt will begin logging data points to the sheet name you specified. If the sheet does not exist, it will automatically be created.

Note

Points are only pushed to Google Sheets once every 10 minutes. As a result, it may take up to 10 minutes for the sheet to be created or for the first points to appear.

Setting up TiltBridge for Brewfather

With a premium Brewfather account, you can store temperature and gravity readings from your Tilt Hydrometer as part of your brew logs.

Configuring your TiltBridge for Brewfather

TiltBridge will need your Brewfather stream ID in order to post to your Brewfather account.

  1. Go to Brewfather and log in to your account
  2. Click the Settings option in the menu on the left
  3. Under “Power-ups” in the lower left corner, click the “switch” next to “Custom Stream” if it is not already toggled
  4. Copy just the string of letters/numbers that appears after the start of the URL (http://log.brewfather.net/stream?id=) to your clipboard
  5. On a device connected to the same network as the TiltBridge, navigate to http://tiltbridge.local/ (replace tiltbridge in this URL with the mDNS name you set during initial setup)
  6. Click the Settings link at the top of the dashboard
  7. Choose the Target Settings tab and then select Brewfather
  8. In the Brewfather Stream key field paste the string you copied earlier and click Update

Note

The first data “push” will be attempted within 10 seconds of the key first being entered, but due to rate limits it may take up to 15 minutes for data to first appear in Brewfather.

Testing Brewfather

Once the Brewfather Stream key is provided, the TiltBridge will begin transmitting gravity data once every 15 minutes. Following the first data transmission, you can easily check in Brewfather to see if the data was received.

  1. Go to Brewfather and log in to your account
  2. Click the Devices option in the menu on the left
  3. All Tilt devices should appear in the list as Custom Stream devices and will be identified by their color

Note

Per Brewfather’s guidelines, data is only pushed once every 15 minutes.

Setting up TiltBridge for Brewstatus

TiltBridge is designed to allow for data to be pushed to Brewstatus. This functionality was helpfully added by contributors to the project on GitHub and has not yet been documented.

Note

If you use Brewstatus and would like to help write this documentation, please reach out!

Todo

Document Brewstatus configuration

Setting up TiltBridge for Taplist.io

TiltBridge has built-in support for Taplist.io. To use, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to the Taplist.io Dashboard.
  2. Visit Account ‣ Integrations ‣ Tilt Hydrometer
  3. Create a new Tilt integration and copy the webhook URL.
  4. Paste the URL into TiltBridge settings.

Setting up TiltBridge for TiltBridge Cloud

A TiltBridge-specific app for phones has been released to allow users to view the gravity of their brews remotely. This app and the cloud behind it are specific to the TiltBridge and are designed to target the device. To begin using the TiltBridge Cloud, download the relevant phone app to begin setup:

Todo

Document TiltBridge Cloud setup

Setting up TiltBridge for Home Assistant/MQTT

TiltBridge is designed to allow for data to be pushed to Home Assistant via MQTT.

  1. Follow Initial Setup to flash your ESP32.
  2. Configure TiltBridge to upload to your favourite cloud provider
  3. Verify your Home Assistant installation is configured for MQTT (either via the Add-On or an independent MQTT broker)
  4. If desired, add a new user for tiltbridge to MQTT Broker configuration. Avoid generating a long password.
  5. In http://tiltbridge.local/ , configure IP of MQTT broker, user and password details. Configure MQTT Topic to be tiltbridge, which will result inthe MQTT topic(s)0 of tiltbridge/tilt_$colour for your Tilt device(s)
  6. TiltBridge will now be auto-discovered and can be automatically configured in Home Assistant