Electric brewery design group

[tlael]

I'm pretty curious about this, myself, I'd love to participate. I'm no electrician or engineer, but I'm pretty decent with wiring. I managed to completely rewire my home, so there's that... And I read a good web site once!

You don't live in an apartment building off of Lindell between Sara and Vandeventer, do you?

[dapsmith]

Definitely adding e-stops or physical on/off switches is a must with the BCS. Sometimes the web interface would lose connection and it would take me 30 seconds to realize that. There were other times when I did not have enough water in a kettle causing the elements to get super red-hot. Several times I had to resort to pulling the main plug to shut things down. If you are going to automate valves and incorporate water level shutoffs, then BCS or Brewtroller is the way to go.

My second electrical box included 30amp relays on a "light" switch for each heating element. That allows me to e-stop each element as needed.

For the Brew Kettle dimmer switch, I wasn't able to source a high load dimmer by itself so I did some research and found that the best way was to utilze a PWM (Pulse width modulation) switch mated to a solid state relay. A PWM basically is full on or full off, but you can vary the length of time between on and off. Thats what allows you to "dim" the heating element. The switches are readily available to dim LED lights so I just used the following. You can probably find something similar from Lowes.

dimmer switch: http://www.elementalled.com/reign-12v-led-dimmer-switches.html
12v driver: http://www.elementalled.com/12v-driver.html

I've put a few photos and a handwritten wiring diagram of the PWM dimmer setup here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/15139916@N02/sets/72157630640320418/

[StLBeer]

I agree, e-stops are a must. Mine is made to leak something like 0.06a to neutral. That's enough to trip the GFCI spa panel.

Nice controller for the BK as well. The Auber PIDs manual control is quite easy. It's also pretty easy to test that e-stop switch while brewing , but I do have a contactor on each element as well so the on/off for each one is pretty easy.

Regarding PWM, I built this one: http://www.bakatronics.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=383. It was $8 at Gateway Electronics. There was one capacitor I changed though so it would elongate the cycle to about 2 seconds.

Have you seen the controllers at dragonstills? Check out this one: http://www.stilldragon.com/basic-controller.html

I'd like to know how a simple potentiometer connected to the control side of an SSR can work. Where's the control voltage come from?

You have a nice rig. I made my RIMs tube out of SS pipe, so it's not quite as streamlined as your is.

[dapsmith]

STLBeer:
I'm not an electrical expert so I don't know exactly how to answer this: "I'd like to know how a simple potentiometer connected to the control side of an SSR can work"

If you are talking about my wiring, it just works. The control voltage comes from the 12V driver. The on or off is controlled by the dimmer (PWM) switch. The 12V DC current runs through the PWM dimmer switch then on to the SSR. The SSR uses that on/off signal generated by the PWM dimmer to open or close the 120V Hot leg "A" wire. The SSR has an LED on it so you can actually see it dim or brighten as you move the dimmer switch.

Your PWM control board is a much cheaper method than mine and I'm sure it works just as well. I took the easy way out. I hadn't seen the dragonstills stuff, either, but it looks like it accomplishes the same thing.

RIMS tube is from Darrin at Brewers Hardware. It is nice.

[StLBeer]

I understand your wiring fine. It makes sense being a 12v DC current.

At any rate, is there enough interest from the club to do anything about it?

[astx813]

I'm pretty curious about this, myself, I'd love to participate. I'm no electrician or engineer, but I'm pretty decent with wiring. I managed to completely rewire my home, so there's that... And I read a good web site once!

You don't live in an apartment building off of Lindell between Sara and Vandeventer, do you?

Ouch. But to answer your question, no. My rewired abode is still electrically undamaged.