Power Balancing

I read through a bunch of threads for this but couldn’t find anything.

I have the balancer/mutex setup and it does work. Both sides get split 50/50 while 100% of both is required but the achieved output is only 33.3%.

I assume this is due to speed of pwm pulse.

Also would lowering pwm pulse to say 1s instead of 4. Would that make boiling more balanced and steady. I feel like the possibility for overshoot in my rims tube with a 30% pump speed during mash would be less likely.

Do you have an extra hold time in the mutex or in the mutex constraints?
If you export your blocks I can have a look.

Thanks a bunch.
brewblox-blocks-spark-one.json.txt (12.4 KB)

Like I expected, in the mutex you have ‘Extra lock time after an actuator turns off’ set to 1 second.

That means that there will be 1 second in which no actuators can be active, so you can only reach 33%.
Set that to zero and you can get 50%.

Awesome. Would lowering the pwm pulse on the elements, smooth out my boil and lessen overshoot?

A 4 or 2 second period doesn’t matter for overshoot, which is on a much larger timescale. The PID settings should be tweaked to reduce overshoot.

I wouldn’t go much lower than 2 seconds, because switching between the 2 elements can have a small delay. Just try different values yourself, but give both PWM blocks the same period.

@Bob_Steers this is one I uploaded.