Home Assistant Podcast Brewing With Home Assistant: From Modbus PIDs to ESPHome Fermentation Control with Greg Martin
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Nov 11, 2025 Greg Martin, a passionate homebrew enthusiast and electronics guru, shares insights on building brewery control systems using ESPHome and Home Assistant. He explains how he retrofitted Modbus PIDs for seamless temperature and pressure control. Greg also reveals his journey into brewing automation, turning his project into a scalable business. Discover innovative uses of AI for metering, clever home automations like fish-feeding sensors, and how he celebrates sports at home with dynamic LED lights. His expertise blends brewing with automation for a smarter setup!
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Bluetooth Gravity And Pressure Sensing
- Greg added Bluetooth gravity sensors by placing the BLE probe in the tank and reading it via an ESP proxy mounted above the tanks.
- He also integrated pressure monitoring and fermentation control to expand beyond temperature control.
Alert Brewers To Prevent Batch Loss
- Offer brewers charts and alerts for temperature and gravity so they catch issues during off hours.
- Automate alerts to prevent costly batch losses instead of assuming manual checks suffice.
Choose Mini PCs For Reliable Performance
- Prefer mini PCs with 8GB RAM over low‑RAM SBCs when running many ESPHome builds or complex configs.
- Plan hardware choices before installs because insufficient RAM can cause crashes during compilation.