Hi Brewpi forms,
I’ve been trying to complete a custom fermentation chamber almost 2 years now. I started out thinking I could build something that would be more efficient and look better than a cheap used fridge with TEC devices and PC cooling radiators. I realize now there would have been way simpler ways to upgrade my ice powered fermentation chamber, but I’m now really close to done and have learned a ton along the way. I appreciate lots of folks might see my approach as fool-hardy, but I’m committed to seeing it through and already have 90% of the parts. Hopefully in the end I will have a COP on the order of a small fridge with an insulated box that looks way more presentable than a second fridge in my small apartment.
With the Peltier device, I’d like to have the micro-controller running a loop just to make sure my cooling setup doesn’t get too cold and heating setup doesn’t get too hot, in the event of either I’d cut power to the peltier and let things reach equilibrium.
Can folks weight in as to whether an arduino uno would have enough overhead to handle to monitoring the peltier heating and cooling loops in addition to all the brewpi code? I have a little familiarity with arduino programing, but the brewpi code is a bit intimidating. It seems like it could be simple to add an arduino nano or micro (which can be found for $10-15) as a slave device to monitor my peltier setup, and use brewpi to run the control algorithm that tells it when to turn on and off/heat or cool.
Opinions and thoughts about trying to use two arduinos or one for this would be a big help. I’m still on the learning curve for all the brewpi code, and have no idea how I’d be able to answer my 1 or 2 arduino question without help from all of you.
Thanks