Heat Pad (Direct) or Ambient Heat Source?

Hardware
1

Hello All,

My question is… are heat mats effective when using BrewPi??? The heat is applied directly to the fermenter and has little correlation with “Fridge Temp” in relation to “Beer Temp”. i.e. typical installations seem to favour “space heaters” so the ambient temp of the chamber will govern the “Beer Temp”.

If BPi (working as a PID) uses the ambient temp as a governing variable to control the fermentation (Beer) temp I would suggest that this wouldn’t work (very well). i.e. the heat mat doesn’t heat the space… the correlation Beer Temp and Fridge Temp is missing.

I hope this makes sense!!!

I’m still designing and building my system so haven’t had a chance to play with Bpi but the above may well affect my design decisions. I currently use heat mats with an STC-1000 but it’s not Heath Robinson enough for my tastes!!!:grin:

Thanks All.

2

With the current version of BrewPi, the heat mat is indeed coupled to the fridge temp. However, the fridge setpoint will be controlled by the beer temp, so if the beer temp rises, the fridge setpoint will drop and the heater will turn off.

Later we will have the option to configure BrewPi in a way that it knows that it is using direct heat. So if you are still using a STC1000 and will switch to BrewPi later, your heat mat will work fine.

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