BrewPi Dual Valve Controller

Hi Elco,

great! You can reserve some for me already :smile:

PS: I already finished building my brewing rig as per your schema, it is fully tubed and ready (just the electrical part missing, of course)

Lukas

Looks fantastic. Has anyone been able to locate a motorized valve which uses tri-clover fittings versus threaded? How about 3-way valves of any kind? For example I’m using a plate chiller but I’d like to use a 3-way valve to divert the flow around it until my kettle has a strong whirlpool. This is the kind of valve I found to use for this task, but motorized would have been a dream. Elco, I hope you can forgive the link to a competitive site, the purpose is academic of course: https://www.brewershardware.com/1-Tri-Clover-3-Way-Ball-Valve.html

I have not seen a clover fitted 3 way valve but you could certainly adapt one to support by using a 1 1/2" clover/ 1/2" MPT fitting (3 will be needed for a 3 way) and lots of sites have them. I only include one as an example (sorry Elco).
http://www.morebeer.com/products/stainless-15-tc-12-mpt.html
Mike

Elco, By the way very nice re-layout for your package! Looking forward to the availability.
Mike

You mean motorized, or something other than what was in the link I provided?

Well yes BeerGrylls, I have an electric 3 way valve, one in my system and the other 6 are 2 way valves. But no I have not seen pre set up Clover fitted electric fitted valves.

Elco,
Any updates on when the units will be in the store? Also will this unit work for both electric valves and SSRs?
Thank you for your time and support.
Mike

Boards are done. I’ll be picking them up later this week.
There will be 2 expansion boards, one for SSRs, one for valves.

Sweet. I’ll be ordering some boards when they’re available.

Elco,
Thanks for the update!!! Just curious if both expansion boards are done or just one of the two. It is not a rush for me as I am retiring in August and will not be able to set my brew system up until then anyway, just tracking your progress and not pushing. Are they both going to fit into the same enclosure you showed above or are they going to be in different enclosures. If they are going to both be in the same enclosure can you tell which one is which? I only ask as I would hate to put one in the wrong function and let the smoke out as they never work once you let the smoke out… :wink:
Thanks again for your time and support, plus lots of luck!
Mike

Elco,

Thanks for your help with the temp sensors. I have ordered more and am optimistic for future projects. I’m not sure where to put this post, but it relates to this thread. Feel free to move it if there’s a better place. As previously stated I have a raspi, brewpi photon spark (v2), a temp probe, a valve control expansion board and 2 motorized ball valves from the brewpi website about 1 years ago (checked invoice).

I have a question about the valve control expansion board hardware. I connected the board to a my spark via a rj2 cord for the first time last week. It started to put out a lot of heat on the H-bridge and DS2408 chips. Full disclosure again, I’m not an expert on circuits. After it cooled and I took the board out of the enclosure and I noticed a darken section on the underside corresponding to where the chips were on the other side. See below photos for reference.


A friend who has experience with circuit boards mentioned after looking at it that the solder was touching across the DS2408 chip. In the above pictures in the thread it is not. I’m not sure if heating up is normal or what my next steps would be if it is or not.

The ultimate goal is to get the motorized valves to work with the expansion board, spark and rpi. I have not been able to see the motorized valves on the web interface or control them, but that’s a side issue at this point.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Eric

Hi Eric,

The blob of solder shorting the pins on that chip is definitely not good and probably the cause of the heat.
That’s a manufacturing problem and needs to be replaced.

Can you send me your address in a PM or e-mail? I’ll put a replacement board in the mail.

Elco

@Elco when will these be back in stock? :slight_smile: