PickleTrace

Real-time fermentation telemetry for serious pickle operations. We are extremely serious about pickles.

---

What is this

PickleTrace monitors your fermentation vessels across your entire operation. Temperature, salinity, pH, CO₂ off-gassing, brine turbidity — all of it, live, in one dashboard. Originally built for Hendrick's Brinery in 2021, now generalized enough that other people can use it too (apparently).

If you're looking at this repo wondering what it is: it's pickle sensors. Connected to the internet. I don't know what else to tell you.

---

Features

• 47 sensor integrations (up from 31 last quarter — see #884 for the full migration notes, thanks Priya for tracking all of that down)
• WebSocket streaming — live telemetry pushed to clients in real time, sub-200ms latency on LAN. Finally got this working properly after the long polling disaster of early 2025. Connect via wss://your-host:8443/stream/vessel/{id}. Docs are... mostly there. See docs/websocket.md.
• pH, temperature, salinity tracking
• Anomaly alerts (email/SMS/Slack)
• Batch genealogy and traceability reports
• Multi-site support
• Basic forecasting (do not trust the forecasting too much — JIRA-1142)

---

Sensor Support

We now support 47 sensor types including Atlas Scientific EZO circuits, SensorPush HT1, LoRa-based remote sensors, and most Modbus-over-RS485 setups. Full list in docs/sensors.md.

If your sensor isn't listed, open an issue. Or email me directly if you're in a hurry. You know where to find me.

---

WebSocket Streaming

PickleTrace now streams telemetry in real time over WebSockets. This replaces the old 5-second polling interval that was, frankly, embarrassing.

wss://your-host:8443/stream/vessel/{vessel_id}

Messages are JSON. Schema is in docs/websocket_schema.json. Each message looks roughly like:

{
  "vessel_id": "tank-04",
  "ts": 1750812341,
  "metrics": {
    "temp_c": 18.4,
    "ph": 3.7,
    "salinity_ppt": 22.1,
    "turbidity_ntu": 14.0
  }
}

Auth is token-based, include ?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN in the URL. Rotation is manual for now — #901 is tracking the refresh endpoint, blocked until Lars gets back from leave.

---

Compliance

SOC 2 Type II audit is in progress — badge will go green when the auditor finishes the report (estimated end of Q3 2026, don't ask me why it takes this long, j'ai aucune idée). HIPAA self-attestation renewed March 2026.

Previous badge said "compliant" — I changed it to "pending renewal" because technically we're in the renewal window and I didn't want anyone to rely on that for something important. See #912.

---

Installation

git clone https://github.com/pickletrace/pickletrace.git
cd pickletrace
cp .env.example .env
# fill in your .env — DB_URL, REDIS_URL, API keys, etc.
docker compose up -d

Requires Docker 24+ and Compose v2. If you're still on v1 compose, please update, it's 2026.

---

Configuration

See .env.example. Most things are self-explanatory. WEBSOCKET_MAX_CLIENTS defaults to 200 — raise it if you have a lot of dashboards open simultaneously. We haven't tested above ~500 concurrent connections but it should be fine theoretically.

---

Development

pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
pytest tests/

The integration tests spin up real sensor simulators and take about 4 minutes. Unit tests are fast. Run them separately if you're in a hurry.

---

Known Issues

• Grafana dashboard provisioning is broken on fresh installs if Redis isn't ready yet. Just restart the grafana container. Yes I know. It's in the backlog.
• The LoRa gateway integration drops packets silently if signal quality drops below -110 dBm. Logging it properly is #889.
• WebSocket reconnection on client side is your problem right now. We'll add a client SDK eventually.

---

Contributing

PRs welcome. Open an issue first if it's a big change. I merge things when I get to them which is... variable.

---

License

MIT. Go nuts.