bobsbeer
Well-Known Member
I have rather been hijacking Stevela's thread, but as this version doesn't incorporate an Arduino I felt it better to have it's own thread.
This controller was made up of a control unit from E-Bay with added flow meter, thermometer, and solenoid valve which I then housed in a craft box.
A view of the insides:
And the display:
To make this I used
The controller - From Ebay HERE
As you can see it came with a solenoid valve and flow meter. However this unit can also monitor the temperature of the liquid being transferred so I added a NTC temperature sensor, which I need to get a micro connector for, so is waiting to be connected. Also from E Bay HERE
To mount the temperature I used a 15 mm brass compression repair connector and drilled and threaded the M8 thread. Fitted perfectly and the probe is sitting in the path of the liquid.
To either end is a 1/2" female straight threaded connector.
The plumbing bit were all from B&Q
As luck would have it the made up length just fitted a spare craft box I had. To the outside there will be Camlock male fittings, but these haven't arrived yet, so for testing purposes I fitted hoselock on the inlet and jg on the outlet as that's all I had to hand.
The unit can be set to a required volume, and stops when the volume is reached by the meter, which shuts the valve. The valve is a bit slow to close, so on testing it ran over by about 200-300 mls. This was the same for 1 lt or 5 lt tests, so is fairly consistent. To some extent the overrun is dependant on the flow velocity, but a test run and you can regulate the inlet pressure as this is shown on the display in Liters per minute. On stopping it reads the total volume metered. And later measurements showed this to be fairly accurate, so you know the overrun amount. I mounted the flow meter down stream but I don't think it matters which way round it is as the flow volume should be the same.
The unit is powered from a 24v DC transformer which I recycled from an old printer. At the moment the wire goes through a hole in the back, but I plan to tidy this up by fitting a DC plug socket. Now all I need to do is get a brew on, which will be a kit as my MT is out of action having an upgrade. But it should be able to measure the volume required by just pressing a couple of buttons, and letting it fill my bucket. The real intended use is to fill the HLT and measure liquor going into the MT and sparge.
A big thanks to Stevela who had the original idea, and that thread is continuing as it uses an Arduino to do the same job. That will be project number 2......or is it 7 by now. :lol:
This controller was made up of a control unit from E-Bay with added flow meter, thermometer, and solenoid valve which I then housed in a craft box.
A view of the insides:
And the display:
To make this I used
The controller - From Ebay HERE
As you can see it came with a solenoid valve and flow meter. However this unit can also monitor the temperature of the liquid being transferred so I added a NTC temperature sensor, which I need to get a micro connector for, so is waiting to be connected. Also from E Bay HERE
To mount the temperature I used a 15 mm brass compression repair connector and drilled and threaded the M8 thread. Fitted perfectly and the probe is sitting in the path of the liquid.
To either end is a 1/2" female straight threaded connector.
The plumbing bit were all from B&Q
As luck would have it the made up length just fitted a spare craft box I had. To the outside there will be Camlock male fittings, but these haven't arrived yet, so for testing purposes I fitted hoselock on the inlet and jg on the outlet as that's all I had to hand.
The unit can be set to a required volume, and stops when the volume is reached by the meter, which shuts the valve. The valve is a bit slow to close, so on testing it ran over by about 200-300 mls. This was the same for 1 lt or 5 lt tests, so is fairly consistent. To some extent the overrun is dependant on the flow velocity, but a test run and you can regulate the inlet pressure as this is shown on the display in Liters per minute. On stopping it reads the total volume metered. And later measurements showed this to be fairly accurate, so you know the overrun amount. I mounted the flow meter down stream but I don't think it matters which way round it is as the flow volume should be the same.
The unit is powered from a 24v DC transformer which I recycled from an old printer. At the moment the wire goes through a hole in the back, but I plan to tidy this up by fitting a DC plug socket. Now all I need to do is get a brew on, which will be a kit as my MT is out of action having an upgrade. But it should be able to measure the volume required by just pressing a couple of buttons, and letting it fill my bucket. The real intended use is to fill the HLT and measure liquor going into the MT and sparge.
A big thanks to Stevela who had the original idea, and that thread is continuing as it uses an Arduino to do the same job. That will be project number 2......or is it 7 by now. :lol: