Myrki’s story started with a hobby and a beginner’s kit for brewing beer. Thanks to Michael, Grisbel, Ignition, a lot of ambition and competence, the Myrki microbrewery became so much more since then.
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About Myrki
Myrki is a microbrewery based in Denmark. The owner, otherwise known as the “head brewer”, is Michael. He is an automation engineer, and he started making his own beer from scratch for fun.
After he saw that the beer is actually good, he decided to get the proper equipment to make beer “the right way”. Now, Myrki moved to a bigger space, where Michael can brew beer and sell it in his store.
Myrki has everything it needs to create tasty beer – a boiler, a fermentation tank, a large industrial sink, a wash bin etc. On top of that, he had a recipe management app on his phone called “Brewfather”.
But it got progressively harder to keep track and control the system, so he wanted a solution to automate his brewery processes.
The challenge
There are multiple things that needed added functionalities to improve accessibility and control:
The boiler is a crucial part of the process. There are exact temperatures that the boiler needs to heat up to and they have to be constant. Before our solution, Michael had to be alert to switch the boiler on and off manually to keep the required temperature.
“The Ancient HMI”, as Michael calls it. He had an old analog device with small buttons to control the temperatures. The device was at the bottom of the tank, so he had to get on the floor to use it.
There was no way to log the system’s data, so Michael could never know what went wrong at a certain point in time. He couldn’t store or access historical data to get essential knowledge about how his processes were working.
Our solution
Michael needed a solution that would make it easier for him to run his new start-up. He wanted to access his data, automate as many of his processes as possible, and control the system from a distance.
That’s when Grisbel entered the stage. Working with Michael, she took charge of the project, mapping out the practical steps to achieve their goals.
Here’s what we had in terms of hardware:
- Enuda was a 2nd place winner in an Ignition competition last year. We won a groov RIO from Opto 22, which fit perfectly into this project.
- Temperature sensors attached to the tanks
We started out as we always do – with a small idea for the output we needed first.
Accessibility
The first goal was to be able to turn the boiler on and off automatically depending on the temperature and, hopefully, without having to get on the floor.
We connected the temperature sensors to the RIO, which is connected to Ignition via MQTT.
We built a solution in Ignition Perspective to present the collected data in a user-friendly front-end that he can visualise and control on his chosen device (phone and tablet).
Everything is stored and configured in one place with no altered temperature values because all parts connect to Ignition effectively.
Knowledge
Grisbel built a PostgresSQL database for Michael to be able to log data and access it anytime to gain valuable information about his system and to store historical data.
Ease
Michael had the Brewfather app (a cloud-based solution for recipe management) on his phone. However, he had to do the recipe management on the app and do it again on his production equipment.
Grisbel suggested connecting Ignition to Brewfather’s API. So, she wrote the code for it. It surprised her how fast and easily Ignition connected to another API and to the RIO.
All these smaller parts of a whole led to some pretty significant outcomes.
The outcomes
“Faster” and “easier” are the two words that best describe what our solution did for Michael’s microbrewery.
Now, he can…
- Control his equipment on his phone.
- Read everything needed for a batch of beer (recipes, temperature etc.), as well as actually start a batch instantly choosing a specific recipe and get the values (temperatures, times) from the batch.
- Benefit from a drastically reduced possibility for errors because there’s only a unique source of information that the system has to work based on.
- Enjoy a user-friendly front-end that presents the relevant data very understandably.
“It saves a lot of time and effort.”, Michael happily said.
Favourite features
Michael has a cooling system for his fermentation tanks. It keeps the temperature stable in the tank. He put sensors on it and he gets an alarm on his phone if anything goes wrong.
“If I’m on vacation on the other side of the world, I can simply log in to the app and see if my cooler works properly.”
Michael
Grisbel was impressed by the connection between Ignition and Brewfather. It simplified the process so much more.
Everything is connected and you’re not locked into anything – the more your project grows, the more we improve our solution. Working with a constant flow of output, our solutions are easily adaptable.
“This is impossible” – no, it isn’t. It’s completely possible.
Grisbel
This is just a small-scale example of what can be done using Ignition. Essentially, it’s comparable to any enterprise situation: we were able to connect the ERP system (Enterprise Resource Planning) with the production floor to have an automated, seamless flow of real-time, valuable data.
Everything is open-source, both real-time and historical data is easy to access from anywhere, and Michael can control and analyse his processes.
Do you want an effective, affordable, and customised solution for your operation? Contact us now to get started.
