CraftBeerPi Firmware

This project provides a buildroot based firmware to run CraftBeerPi on embedded systems. Currently the RaspberryPi 3B/4B is supported, but adding other RaspberryPi versions is fairly easy.

Motivation and intended use

This project exists to lower the barrier of entry for using CraftBeerPi even more. Installing CraftBeerPi should be as easy as flashing an image to an SD-Card and be done with it. But furhermore the use should be reliable enough even for commercial applications and still be simple enough that an average brewer can have safe and reliable operation of CraftBeerPi without deep IT knowledge. This image provides a buildroot based firmware providing everything necessary to run CraftBeerPi. By using Buildroot we can utilize a readonly root filesystems which reduces strain to the sd card, prolonging it's life. Also there is no unnecessary bloat, enabling possibly better perfomance than with Raspberry OS. To keep operations simple all the state of CraftBeerPi is stored on an attached USB drive. This enables the brewer to have a simple backup procedure, without the need to know anything about Linux, SSH etc. Also in the future, basic configuration can be done via the existence and content of files on the USB drive (i.e. enabling a WiFi AP for complete standalone usage etc.).

Features

• Easy to install
• Support for SPI based actors/sensors
• Support for I2C based actors/sensors
• Support for GPIO based actors/sensors
• CraftBeerPi running under Python 3.10
• CraftBeerPi state and config on USB flash drive
• Announce CraftBeerPi service via mDNS
• Running Wifi AP on the Raspberry Pi
• Integrated MQTT broker
• Easy rauc based updates via USB or OTA
  • Updates via USB
  • Updates via network
  • Proper setup of signing keys etc.

Supported Platforms

• Raspberry Pi 3B+
• Raspberry Pi 4B

Usage

• Flash the provided image to your sd card (i.e. via dd if=<path/to/image> of=/dev/<sdcard> bs=1m status=progress)
• Insert 1 (exactly one, not more) exFAT formatted USB drive into one of the USB ports of the Raspberry Pi
• Boot the Raspberry Pi

Update

To update via USB place the update file as cbpifw-update.bin in the top folder of the USB drive and boot the Raspberry Pi.

Enabling the WiFi AP

The WiFi AP will be enabled if a file called ap.conf is found in the top folder of the USB drive. At this point in time this is simply a file containing hostapd configuration. The file needs to have the following content:

interface=wlan0
driver=nl80211
ssid=<Name of the AP>
auth_algs=1
ignore_broadcast_ssid=0
hw_mode=g
wpa=2
wpa_passphrase=<Password for the WiFi>
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
channel=5
country_code=DE

Build

Native

• Simply clone buildroot 2022.05.1 alongside this repository
• Change into the buildroot dir
• Run make BR2_EXTERNAL=<path/to/firmware-craftbeerpi> craftbeerpi_rpi3_defconfig
• Run make
• Under output/images you will find the file sdcard.img containing a flashable image for the Raspberry Pi 3B

Docker

This repo provides a Dockerfile to provide an easy to use build environment.

• Build with docker build -t <name-and-tag> .
• Run with docker run -ti --rm -v $PWD/:/home/br-user/external:rw <name-and-tag>
• Change into /home/br-user/buildroot
• In the provided shell execute make BR2_EXTERNAL=../external/ craftbeerpi_rpi3_defconfig and make
• After the build finishes you can copy output/images/sdcard.img to /home/br-user/external/sdcard.img and flash it as usual