Alemans Effin Brew Controller Project

[Aleman]

You lot only have yourself to blame!! All your discussions on Electronic dodads, have forced me to ask She for once of these for Christmas.



Initially I'm using it to monitor the temps of my new Plate Chiller (In and Out, Wort AND Coolant) . . . but It will probably be used for fermentation monitoring as well. Of course to do this I'll need at least 4 one wire Temp Sensors. I was tempted to get this starter kit



but once you added the cost of the shield and the 3.2" touch display panel it doubled the cost of the kit, anyone any idea where I can get the kit bits only from?? After all no point in having something electronic if it doesn't flash LEDs What do you all do for temp sensors??

It will be good to get my hands dirty with coding in a real environment again :ugeek: :ugeek:

 

[bobsbeer]

For temp sensors you want the 1 wire ones by Dallas (actually has 3 wires :whistle: ). DS18B20. Easy to get on ebay. You can get made up ones or make your own. You can have as many as you want all controlled from 1 pin on the arduino. They get daisy chained together. Ebay is also the place for the bit and bobs, such as the LCD screen. Get a 4 x 20 display. The common 2 x 20 or less don't give you enough display room.

 

[Vossy1]

I sort of knew a big can of worms had been opened :rofl: ...as I know absolutely nothing about any of it I'll just admire from afar I had thought about this a long time ago but sadly lack the ability to do it, so I'll be looking forward to the results!

 

[anthonyUK]

I might be able to sort you out 4 sensors.
I can check later if interested.

The initial cost of Arduino is attractive but when you start adding the shields the cost does mount up which is why I went with a Raspberry Pi.

 

[rpt]

The initial cost of Arduino is attractive but when you start adding the shields the cost does mount up which is why I went with a Raspberry Pi.

Are you using the Pi just for monitoring or are you controlling the fermentation temperature with it? If the latter, are you using an RTOS or Linux?

 

[bobsbeer]

If you go to THIS site (Maxim) and register with a business email, they will send you some free samples. I got 3 free DS18S20 sensors. I've bought more since, but it's a start and you don't get any cheaper than free. The sensor data sheet is available HERE

Now depending on how far you want to go you may also want to have a look at the brewtroller. HERE It will give you some ideas. Also Jabba's code over on Jims is looking good.

 

[anthonyUK]

The initial cost of Arduino is attractive but when you start adding the shields the cost does mount up which is why I went with a Raspberry Pi.

Are you using the Pi just for monitoring or are you controlling the fermentation temperature with it? If the latter, are you using an RTOS or Linux?

I'm only logging with the Pi. An RTOS would be better for controlling temps etc.

 

[Fil]

+1 to getting the free sample 1 wire sensors for development.. even if u go rtd, u can develop using the 1 wire jobs allowing u to use a simple prototyping circuit concentrating on code logic without complex h/w debugging..

Using RTD sensors is gonna be expensive with a dedicated daughter board (circa 50 usd last time i checked) or complex on the electronics side using precision components where the 1 wire jobs are just as accurate and need a single standard resistor in the circuit and done..

im ok with the code side of things but a numpty on the electronics side and have spent a long time reading up on the rtd solutions all of which are a wee bit baffeling to me.

My controller contains 2 backup pid units so sharing the same sensors seemed worth pursuing

But now im back on track using 1 wire sensors with the arduino and rtd's on the pids.


while arduino shields are simple leggo jobs and save soldering.. there is another route which is to use small breadboards and prototyping plugged wires and a hot glue gun to hold the working circuits in place..

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mini-170-Tie- ... 1e819fce39

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/70-Solderless ... 1c39b794fc

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/40pcs-Dupont- ... 1e839e9b88

single gpio buttons like the 1 wire sensors just need a single inline resistor, which is the sort of circuit i can handle.. touch screens,hmm, a nice feature and i treated myself to one of the ebay board/shield/screen bundles but didnt play with it straight away and later discoverd its not working ?? well none of the example sketches do anything but make the screen flicker, ive yet to debug to discover if it s the screen or shield thats the prob..

As mentioned Jabba has a 'brewery programming' thread over on Jims.. in it you have his complete code listing to interface with the arduino pid lib, 1 wire sensors and DC pump control. Matho another contributer in the thread generously shared both his very elegant code solution and detailed h/w schematics for a brewmiester clone controller including A/C pump control... And Alexe has shared his non pid herms control system too its a fantastic resource and was responsible for wetting my appitite..

 

[Kevin Wood]

Good to see some more AVR controlled brewing going on. :thumb:

I made a dual PID controller based on an AVR when I went all-grain. I use the DS1820 based temperature probes potted in stainless steel tubes that you can find on Ebay (for about the cost of the bare chip!) and they've survived a dozen or so brews without issue.

It's not too difficult to roll your own peripherals to cut the cost. The small 2 line LCD displays based on the Hitachi HD44780 protocol are very readily available new on Ebay for little money, and, in fact, they are so widely used on bits of IT gear, printers, etc. that you can harvest used ones pretty easily. There are plenty of libraries to control them from an AVR.

Arduino boards save time getting started but they put the cost up and there's nothing to them that you can't build yourself. You can also re-use most of the libraries and the Arduino build environment on home made hardware if you've got some means of getting the bootloader into a blank AVR chip.

 

[MacKiwi]

Agree with Kevin here, I'm using the AVR chips and DS1820 sensors, which collectivly cost buttons. If you plan on using more than a couple, the cost savings vs Arduino are significant. As I plan to use them for HLT, HERMS, FV x 3, etc, it seems like a good idea. But then, I plan lots of things that never happen