How to connect RAPT Pill to RAPT Temperature Controller using Bluetooth

The RAPT Pill can be "bonded" to the RAPT Temperature Controller to allow the temperature controller to act as a bluetooth beacon/gateway to relay the data received from the RAPT Pill to the RAPT cloud via the temperature controllers Wi-Fi internet connection.

This is particularly useful in certain situations where the Pill may not be able to connect to Wi-Fi - for example, if your Pill is in a stainless fermenter in a fermentation fridge, which can severely hamper the Wi-Fi signal quality/strength and prevent the Pill from reliably connecting to Wi-Fi in order to submit it's telemetry data to the cloud. 

There are a few steps involved in getting this working together as outlined below. In order to perform the steps below it is assumed that your RAPT Pill and RAPT Temperature Controller are both registered against your account in the RAPT Portal.

1. From the temperature controller, bring up the on screen menu then select Bluetooth and press the Select button. You should be prompted with a screen like the one below. Press the Select button again to enable bluetooth.
   
   
   
   
   
2. You will now see a screen showing Bonded devices and Unbonded Devices (with nothing listed underneath them at this point) which is normal.
   
   
   
   
   
3. Next, connect your RAPT Pill to a power source via USB to enable the captive portal mode. From your phone or other Wi-Fi enabled device, connect to the Pill's Wi-Fi network which should load the captive portal automatically once connected.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Select the Diagnostics menu then click the button to Check for new firmware. Depending on when you last updated the firmware on your Pill, you may need an update in order to access the Bluetooth functionality.
   
   
   
   
   
5. Once the firmware has been updated, connect to the captive portal again and access the Settings menu. Change the Telemetry Method option from Wifi to Bluetooth.
   
   
   
   
   
6. You can also adjust the telemetry method for Bluetooth connectivity as well. Note that the Bluetooth mode uses less power than Wi-Fi so you can increase the frequency without a significantly detrimental impact on battery health.
   
   As a reference, on our Pill we set a Bluetooth telemetry interval of 10 minutes, and after 12 days of fermentation the battery was still at 100% capacity in the RAPT Portal.
   
   
7. Login to the RAPT Portal and access the dashboard. Click the Edit button to edit the settings for your RAPT Pill.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
8. Under the Details section, click the Paired Device drop down menu (should currently say [Unpaired] and select your RAPT Temperature Controller from the list then click the blue Save button at the bottom of the screen.
   
   
   
   
   
9. Go back to your temperature controller and access the Bluetooth menu again (as we did in Step 1 above). You should see your RAPT Pill appear in the Unbonded devices list.
   
   
   
   
   
10. Press the Enter/Select button on the unbonded device. A prompt should now appear confirming you want to bond the device. Press the Enter/Select button on the controller again to confirm you wish to bond this device.
    
    
    
    
    
11. The RAPT Pill should now appear under the bonded devices list
    
    
    
    
    
12. Your Pill is now bonded/connected to your RAPT Temperature Controller. You can now set your Temperature controller to use the Pill for temperature readings instead of the built-in/attached probe. This is done from the menu of the Temperature Controller as well.
    
    The graphs on the RAPT Portal for the Temperature Controller will now also overlay data (gravity and temperature) from the Pill.
    
    In the example below, the green line is the Pill temperature, blue line is the Temperature Controller probe temperature, the yellow line is the gravity reading from the Pill, and the red line is the set/target temperature of the RAPT Temperature Controller.
    
    
    
    
    
    

If you haven't done so already, it's well worth investing the time in performing a calibration of your RAPT Temperature Controller. We discovered ours was out by 3°C in it's default calibration out of the box!

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