Configuring the iSpindel
In this article, I will show how to connect an iSpindel to the Visualization Engine. If you want to know how to set-up the engine, please check this guide.
Press the reset button on the iSpindel to switch from operation mode to configuration mode. When the iSpindel is in configuration mode, it will show up as a Wi-Fi access point. Connect to the iSpindel (just like you connect to the wifi in a coffee shop).
After this, open your browser and type in, the following address: 192.168.4.1 and press enter. Now you should see the main page of the iSpindel. Select Configuration.
After selecting the Configuration option, write the SSID of your Wi-Fi into the SSID box and the password to your Wi-Fi into the Password box. Choose a name for you iSpindel and write it into the iSpindel Name box. I recommend choosing a name, which describes the device (in case of multiple iSpindels). Do not use the name of your next recipe. You can set any name in the Visualization Engine, without always resetting the iSpindel.
Set the Service Type to InfluxDB. This will show more boxes which we need to configure. The Server Port should be 8086 by default, if not change it. The Server Address needs to be the IP address of the device running the Visualization Engine. If you don’t know, I will show how to check it at the end of this guide. Set the InfluxDB db to homebrew. If you set a custom database name during the first guide (with the -d or --database flag) use your custom name. Set username to admin and the password to the value that you added during the installation, with the -p or --password flag.
After all this, press the save button. After a few seconds, the iSpindel should restart and go back to operation mode. You can verify this by checking if the iSpindel Wi-Fi access point is disappeared. Now the iSpindel is sending data to the Visualization Engine.
Checking the address of the Visualization Engine
In the Visualization Engine, open a terminal window and type the following command: ifconfig. Check for the 192.168.X.X address in the output.
Configuring Grafana
Now that the InfluxDB is populated with data from the iSpindel, we can use Grafana to show those measurements. Login to Grafana and go to Dashboard -> Manage.
Select the Homebrew dashboard.
Select Temperature and Edit. This will take you to the configuration page of the Temperature Panel.
Change select measurement to measurements (this is a bug in the current version of the engine), then press the plus sign next to where and select source. After this, a new box will appear with the text select tag value. Press this box and select the name of your iSpindel.
Now change the field value to temperature and the Alias to the custom text. This alias will be assigned to the readings, so I usually set it to the name of the beer. Then press apply.
Repeat this process for the Gravity, Tilt and Battery panels (the field value should mirror the name of the panel). After you have configured all the 4 panels, save the changes by pressing the floppy icon in the dashboard.
From now the Grafana will display the values sent by the iSpindel. When a beer is finished, I usually create a backup of the measurements in the database and clear the data from the original schema. I would not recommend this for beginners.