So I got all my BrewPi setup and running. Currently testing until late Friday. Which I will prepare for my first brew with it on Saturday night. I currently have my ferm chamber in my gauge due to space. based on the chart I feel that the chamber is holding good temp. I have my sensor in my 5 gal carboy.at two 120mm fans running at all times. Please let me know if the chart looks good. The room temp reached 84 today.
Looks good to me. what’s the chamber made off (unless its just a fridge)?
So I noticed one thing last night. when I tested it to ensure it heats properly, I noticed that the door panel of my ferm chamber is not sealed good. I will fix it with a thin strip of foam rubber. @squid, I have a magic chief 4.3 feet fridge with a build on chamber on the front. I will post a picture later today so you can see what it looks like. It is not supper pretty. I was trying to get done fast due to co workers wanting to try some brew lol. Now looking at the chart, I think the little spikes could be due to not proper sealed. The test water was holding temp very well. I think this has to due with the fans running at all times to keep the air moving.
Yer it does rise and fall very quick, why i guessed it wasn’t as insulated as a fridge. You can see when the room temp is in mid 60’s early in the cart it start to equalize with the room temp.
Ya I didn’t get the best insulation board. I went on the cheap end for that. living in HI, cost a lot for things like that. I will learn from this and once I move again I will recreate and make sure it done properly or find another fridge to hold my Cron Fermenter.
But the beer temp is spot on and that’s all that matter’s hope it turn out to be a good one !
Beer temp is right on target and it does not alternate between heating and cooling. Looks fine to me.
Jumping in this I’m using a fridge for my chamber, and despite at higher temperatures it never deviates beyond ±0.06c of the target temp, when it’s cold crashing the heat/cool cycle is very frequent and varies by ±0.5c
I can live with it but is there anything I can do to reduce it, I’m guessing at that low a temperature the change in temp will have little effect on the sleepy yeasties…
Can you zoom in on the part that’s cycling and enable the fridge setting and temp? I can’t say much based on this image.
This should be a bit easier to see this cycle is typical of the last few days.
Cheers
M
There is quite a bit of lag between the beer temp and the fridge temp. This causes the oscillation I think. Could it be that at this lower temperature, the compressor is active longer so more ‘cold’ builds up in the walls of the fridge?
Your fridge also temp seems to never reach the beer temp, so the beer is cooled directly and not via the air in the fridge. Try placing the fridge probe closer to the back wall.
You can also simply remove the heater from the device list when cold crashing.
Thanks I’ll that a try, moving te probe first, although it’s not very long now. Failing that disabling the heater.
My first cold crash has created the clearest of beer though so it still function well.
Just had a look at my settings, and noticed that you said the fridge never reaches the beer temp could it be that my fridge is set not to drop below 1c and the cooling overshoot is 1.4c.
would this mean that when the fridge reach 2.4c effectively it cuts out and warms faster? i’ve not got a room temp configured yet but the cellar is generally a consistent 14c or so.
If i dropped the minimum fridge temp to 0c would that help the Brewpi learn how the fridge works at the lower temperatures?
@elco Sorry me again, the wire on my probe is too short to push it to the back so through the Arduino maintenance panel i assigned my heater to none and updated, now i want to add my heater back in but for some reason when i refresh my device list the switch actuator doesn’t register as being connected. have i done something wrong?
can you post the device list like its shown at http://docs.brewpi.com/after-install/device-configuration.html
OK it wasn’t showing up on the refresh but i added it to the right pin and selected update and it’s added the actuator and i think is heating but i can’t check now as not at home.
For cold crashing, it is probably a good idea to set the minimum fridge temp below 1 degree. But now that I think about it, that could only create more heating because it is allowed to go cooler.
You could also reduce the filtering on the beer sensor to reduce the lag.
i’ve reduced the Beer slow filter delay time to 78 seconds, so ill see how that works
i turned the heater off between 12 and 15:00 today and that made a good difference, but heating is back on again now. i’ll see if the beer slow filter makes a difference.
It looks like the beer sensor just gets unreliable at low temperatures to be honest. I don’t believe the beer temp actually fluctuates that fast. Could you just try setting temp control to OFF and see what it does?
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That’s be a pain in the arse as I don’t know if I have any more probes with a long enough lead??
For info it’s in a thermowell which is well in the beer buts it’s from the lid down so I suppose there could be cold air dropping into it?
It’s now set to off