Meet BrewPi: A Raspberry Pi-based Fermentation Controller
Now here's a sudsy open source idea. You've heard all about the Raspberry Pi--the diminutive Linux-based $25/$35 computer that is being welcomed by hackers everywhere. The tiny devices have already drawn interest from educational system and technology industry leaders. But now there is BrewPi, an open source fermentation controller that runs on Arduino open source hardware and a Raspberry Pi. This device joins the Lego-based Raspberry Pi supercomputer as one of the best Pi devices yet.
At BrewPi.com, you can find a complete slideshow showing how the BrewPi fermentation controller works, and the display is seen above. BrewPi.com notes:
"BrewPi is an open source fermentation controller that runs on an Arduino (for now) and a Raspberry Pi. It can control your beer temperature with 0.1 degree precision, log temperature data in nice graphs and is fully configurable from a web interface. If you are not into brewing, but do like to thinker with electronics, give the article a read. I had to invent many little things that could be very helpful for other projects too. I can think of a lot of cool things you could that involve controlling an Arduino from a web browser."
This is just the latest in a long string of inventive uses of the Raspberry Pi platform. People are putting all flavors of Linux and even Android on the tiny computers, and recently news came from the University of Southampton that Professor Simon Cox and his team of researchers have lashed together an actual supercomputer made of 64 credit card-sized Raspberry Pis using Lego pieces as the glue for the cluster.