Desktop app with a timer would be good with the ability to export recipe to a format for reading on a phone. Or the ability to export from biabacus and import into beersmith so you can use the timer on beersmith.
Just some suggestions. I wondered if anyone's thought about it?
I normally enter my recipe twice. Once in beersmith and once in biabicus. I use biabacus for all my measurements and beersmith only for the timer.
It would be nice to only enter it once though.
Cheers
Re: Are there plans to create a Biabacus app?
Post #2 made 10 years ago
Hey dom, the site is doing some testing atm and has reverted to a default forum style. That caused me to notice your post above for the first time. You posted that nearly a year ago! Before answering any more though, I'd love to hear what you are doing now.
Sorry your post got missed before
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Sorry your post got missed before
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Post #3 made 10 years ago
Hi, funny you should ask.... Well I'm brewing regularly and producing some nice beers. I have 3 fridges now, one of which is a kegerator :-)
I have been using beersmith for the past few recipes, however a couple of beers recently finished quite high FG for some reason. Coincidentally they both were dry yeast (I normally use liquid), so I don't know if it was that. Also I've got a mate who is the brewer in a local brewery and he's offered me brewery yeast. I had some WLP 001 slurry the other week and I finished at 1.010, so I highly recommend brewery yeast to anyone if they're offered it! My latest recipe is an Esb and this time I have used biabacus. I have reverted back to biabacus because it seemed more suited for biab and takes more things into account than beersmith. Cheers!
I have been using beersmith for the past few recipes, however a couple of beers recently finished quite high FG for some reason. Coincidentally they both were dry yeast (I normally use liquid), so I don't know if it was that. Also I've got a mate who is the brewer in a local brewery and he's offered me brewery yeast. I had some WLP 001 slurry the other week and I finished at 1.010, so I highly recommend brewery yeast to anyone if they're offered it! My latest recipe is an Esb and this time I have used biabacus. I have reverted back to biabacus because it seemed more suited for biab and takes more things into account than beersmith. Cheers!
Post #4 made 10 years ago
As an experienced software engineer, I have also been wondering if there (still) are any plans to let BIABacus evolve beyond Excel, along the lines of a web-based app (or chrome app, smartphone app, desktop app, etc)?
BIABacus is already a remarkable tool, but an app could add some polish and improve the accessability to new users, making it even easier to get into home brewing. It could also have some potential in sharing recipes with other users here at BIABrewer even easier.
I played around a bit with Brew Smith and it seems to require quite some time to get started for a beginner user like myself. Especially to setup for BIAB and No-chill, where BIABacus is a great help to answer your initial questions like kettle size needed for mash to match your target batch size. BIAB is also a great way for beginner brewers imho, especially with the addition of no-chill.
BIABacus is already a remarkable tool, but an app could add some polish and improve the accessability to new users, making it even easier to get into home brewing. It could also have some potential in sharing recipes with other users here at BIABrewer even easier.
I played around a bit with Brew Smith and it seems to require quite some time to get started for a beginner user like myself. Especially to setup for BIAB and No-chill, where BIABacus is a great help to answer your initial questions like kettle size needed for mash to match your target batch size. BIAB is also a great way for beginner brewers imho, especially with the addition of no-chill.
Post #5 made 10 years ago
dom: Thanks for getting back to PP's question and sorry you slipped through the cracks. It sounds as though you are going well though. It's always hard to nail down number issues but a main lesson of this site, is that whilst we want you to have the best possible estimates numbers, we want you to focus on the taste of the end result first. Final gravity is one of the hardest brewing numbers to predict on a batch and it should not be given much weight. Taste the beer first and if it tastes great, look no further. If something is wrong, then maybe a number might help you. Please do not chase numbers.
[center]Are there Plans to Create a BIABacus App?[/center]
dom and hojt, great question. PP and I have spent an atrocious amount of time on The BIABacus and at some stages, over the years, have spent months and months communicating with a single coder to get no result (although one made some massive contributions). We have a very clear visual idea of how we would like the BIABacus to appear. In fact, the end result is that it would handle all types of brewing and all brewer's set-ups simply and easily with none of the current, "too much information in one hit", that a new user is faced with now when they open the BIABacus.
I'll add some more notes at the end of this post but nearly all coders now say to me, just write it all in this or that and have everything in the cloud etc etc. The fact is that we had a far more primitive version of The BIABacus running behind the scenes several years ago with macros etc, and Excel could only just handle it and many early versions couldn't handle it as the calculations are very complex and inter-related. Unlike other existing brewing software, the BIABacus relies on many hidden and layered if/then statements. They are what makes it simple but are also what have been so hard to write. Myself and PP are way up on it but if we need to investigate a certain formula, it could take a whole day or more to track/remember the logic behind it.
So, currently all coders tell me to make it a web-based program but I'm getting smarter now. I then ask them to show me just one site on the internet that can do the calcs the BIABacus does, let alone do them live, and there isn't one. From my primitive non-coding background, I do think web-coding is getting closer to what we need but it certainly isn't here yet. I'm not really sure how long it would take to even write a stand-alone program but would certainly love to know if you have any ideas.
For the moment, we'll just concentrate on changing this site over to a new format where info is easy to find. That's a massive job we've been working on for ages as well but software or our expertise in software has really held us back. Some of those limitations have recently disappeared due to software improvements and hopefully the same will happen with the BIABacus.
A Small Example of the Calculations
When you see an online calculator, it usually does a single calculation which affects one or two other fields and often requires a page refresh. Those of you who know The BIABacus well, know that it is very simple and instantaneous, however the calculations that lie hidden underneath are extremely complicated and inter-related. Some versions we had in the past that included some coding would take ten or fifteen seconds to run the calcs! The instantaneous ability of the current BIABacus is actually very important to educators on the site, and we think students and users. Who wants to wait for a page to load and the view load up in a different place instead of just pressing enter and seeing an immediate result? This site wants to be about the best education and, despite its visual and other limitations, the BIABacus is still the most powerful yet simple software out there and by far the easiest to learn.
...
Below is a pic of how changing one number affects so many other fields. I can't put up any other pictures as you would just see a spiderweb. So, unless someone really wants to get their teeth stuck into this, it is probably better we come up with an easier educational framework rather than coding the BIABacus. Definitely open to ideas though.
[center]Are there Plans to Create a BIABacus App?[/center]
dom and hojt, great question. PP and I have spent an atrocious amount of time on The BIABacus and at some stages, over the years, have spent months and months communicating with a single coder to get no result (although one made some massive contributions). We have a very clear visual idea of how we would like the BIABacus to appear. In fact, the end result is that it would handle all types of brewing and all brewer's set-ups simply and easily with none of the current, "too much information in one hit", that a new user is faced with now when they open the BIABacus.
I'll add some more notes at the end of this post but nearly all coders now say to me, just write it all in this or that and have everything in the cloud etc etc. The fact is that we had a far more primitive version of The BIABacus running behind the scenes several years ago with macros etc, and Excel could only just handle it and many early versions couldn't handle it as the calculations are very complex and inter-related. Unlike other existing brewing software, the BIABacus relies on many hidden and layered if/then statements. They are what makes it simple but are also what have been so hard to write. Myself and PP are way up on it but if we need to investigate a certain formula, it could take a whole day or more to track/remember the logic behind it.
So, currently all coders tell me to make it a web-based program but I'm getting smarter now. I then ask them to show me just one site on the internet that can do the calcs the BIABacus does, let alone do them live, and there isn't one. From my primitive non-coding background, I do think web-coding is getting closer to what we need but it certainly isn't here yet. I'm not really sure how long it would take to even write a stand-alone program but would certainly love to know if you have any ideas.
For the moment, we'll just concentrate on changing this site over to a new format where info is easy to find. That's a massive job we've been working on for ages as well but software or our expertise in software has really held us back. Some of those limitations have recently disappeared due to software improvements and hopefully the same will happen with the BIABacus.
A Small Example of the Calculations
When you see an online calculator, it usually does a single calculation which affects one or two other fields and often requires a page refresh. Those of you who know The BIABacus well, know that it is very simple and instantaneous, however the calculations that lie hidden underneath are extremely complicated and inter-related. Some versions we had in the past that included some coding would take ten or fifteen seconds to run the calcs! The instantaneous ability of the current BIABacus is actually very important to educators on the site, and we think students and users. Who wants to wait for a page to load and the view load up in a different place instead of just pressing enter and seeing an immediate result? This site wants to be about the best education and, despite its visual and other limitations, the BIABacus is still the most powerful yet simple software out there and by far the easiest to learn.
...
Below is a pic of how changing one number affects so many other fields. I can't put up any other pictures as you would just see a spiderweb. So, unless someone really wants to get their teeth stuck into this, it is probably better we come up with an easier educational framework rather than coding the BIABacus. Definitely open to ideas though.
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Last edited by Pat on 18 Nov 2015, 01:27, edited 1 time in total.
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Post #6 made 10 years ago
Interesting Pat. I'm sure it can be done (I'm an Ex-coder myself). I guess the problem is HOW to approach it. Maybe you ask on the site who is interested and has coding skills - I bet there's a few. Then if you use an object oriented type language different people could be responsible for developing a particular area. Then you bring it all together for testing. The rules could be externalised so they are not buried deep inside the program, that way it's easy to maintain them. If you wanted it to run on both desktop and phones then maybe you'd be looking at something like HTML5 as you don't want to write 3 versions. These are my immediate thoughts to get the ball rolling and to shake some of the developers out of the woodwork for their comment. Yes the beer tasted fine BTW :-) Cheers.
Post #7 made 10 years ago
Thank you Pat! Thanks a lot for taking the time to put together such a comprehensive reply to our rather naive question. I understand you have been faced by this a couple of times over the years.
I am humbled by the sheer time and effort put into the BIABacus and very inspired by the result and your vision for it (and this site). You've already put much thought into this, no doubt. I'm very curious as to what your ideas for the future might look like! I find it interesting that you've identified the calculations as the mayor area of concern for porting it to something outside the spreadsheet. I'll have to look further into that to understand more.
I would definitely put my money on web application, rather than the native app approach. It has so many benefits in my view, while I have a hard time believing that the limited processing power would be a huge problem in the end. My point in case would be apps like "Microsoft Excel Online" and "Google Spreadsheets", but maybe they are not really fast enough either.
I am humbled by the sheer time and effort put into the BIABacus and very inspired by the result and your vision for it (and this site). You've already put much thought into this, no doubt. I'm very curious as to what your ideas for the future might look like! I find it interesting that you've identified the calculations as the mayor area of concern for porting it to something outside the spreadsheet. I'll have to look further into that to understand more.
I would definitely put my money on web application, rather than the native app approach. It has so many benefits in my view, while I have a hard time believing that the limited processing power would be a huge problem in the end. My point in case would be apps like "Microsoft Excel Online" and "Google Spreadsheets", but maybe they are not really fast enough either.
Post #8 made 10 years ago
[I don't often get time to write on the forum as "Pat". Today is a day where I am attempting to catch up.]
Apologies for my slow reply hojt and dom.
For me, there are many problems in coding the BIABacus. I have, I think now, naively, spent a lot of hours (and some money) trying to even just begin to get it coded. Unfortunately, Excel online and Google spreadsheets can't handle the BIABacus as can't many other formats. But, that is not what we are after anyway. This constant hope, only to always end in failure, made me look at things from a different angle. Basically, I searched for a program, web-based or stand-alone, that had anything like the complexity of the BIABacus and, as far as I am aware, there isn't one. Any program I have looked at is basically 1+1=2 whereas the BIABacus has to look at many, many factors before drawing a conclusion.
I know nothing of gaming programming but maybe it is more suited to that?
For now though, the most efficient use of our limited resources is best spent on the new site. This, in itself, is a major challenge. I'll try and write more on this in the thread linked below.
Many thanks,
Pat
For my convenience, I'm going to close this thread. If you have a reply though, please feel free to post in this thread.
Apologies for my slow reply hojt and dom.
For me, there are many problems in coding the BIABacus. I have, I think now, naively, spent a lot of hours (and some money) trying to even just begin to get it coded. Unfortunately, Excel online and Google spreadsheets can't handle the BIABacus as can't many other formats. But, that is not what we are after anyway. This constant hope, only to always end in failure, made me look at things from a different angle. Basically, I searched for a program, web-based or stand-alone, that had anything like the complexity of the BIABacus and, as far as I am aware, there isn't one. Any program I have looked at is basically 1+1=2 whereas the BIABacus has to look at many, many factors before drawing a conclusion.
I know nothing of gaming programming but maybe it is more suited to that?
For now though, the most efficient use of our limited resources is best spent on the new site. This, in itself, is a major challenge. I'll try and write more on this in the thread linked below.
Many thanks,
Pat
For my convenience, I'm going to close this thread. If you have a reply though, please feel free to post in this thread.
Last edited by Pat on 18 Mar 2016, 00:58, edited 1 time in total.
Are you a "Goodwill Brewer?" Pay forward and Buy Some BIPs
