Hello… new user with very limited knowledge of BrewPi and programming in general. I have two fermentors, which are double-jacketed for cooling with cold water directly from the mains. The intention is to put a temp sensor inside each tank and a motorized ball valve on each to open/close water flow when needed.
So the question is, do I have everything I need to set it up? I did say I’m a newbie.
From BrewPi store:
1 x BREWPI SPARK V2 BREWING TEMPERATURE CONTROLLER
1 x BREWPI VALVE CONTROL EXPANSION BOARD
1 x WATERPROOF ENCLOSURE FOR BALL VALVE CONTROLLER
2 x MOTORIZED BALL VALVE 1/2" BSP
2 x WATERPROOF ONEWIRE TEMPERATURE SENSOR (RJ11, DS18B20), EXTRA LONG CABLE
2 x SOLID STATE RELAY (SSR), 10A
Are you looking to maintain two separate temps here? If the answer is yes then you might be slightly disappointed as the current code doesn’t support multi chamber. This is on the road map but there is a pretty long road ahead before it will be there.
The current dev work is focused on mashing control and once that’s done multi chamber should be coming.
To answer your question about power supply you do not need one for the Spark as it is powered from the USB cable from the Raspberry Pi.
Ok so you are going to use a coil like setup to immersion cool yes?
If yes there is really no need for a motorized valves at this time, you would simply use the cooler out SSR to switch a pump on to making the cooling water flow.
Before we dive into this it is probably good to walk through what sort of setup you want and the desired control. Start by telling me what you want to do with a single vessel and I can help point you in the right direction.
There’s no immersion coil, my tank has a double-wall with cooling jacket where I will use water to control the temperature of the fermentation. The idea is to have a temp probe inside the tank and a motorised ball valve to open/close the cold water when the fermentation temperature goes above desired value.
At present I’m doing the closing/opening of cold water manually, which is far from ideal.
Is the pump that pushes the water always on? How does the water get cooled? Is this actually a Glycol type setup? Will the temp probe be in a thermowell?
There is no pump, the water comes straight from the mains. Living in northern Norway there is no need for extra cooling of the water. It is basic and easy, works excellent even with a 4000 liter fermentor. As far as heating there is no need for it.
Regarding temp sensor, I’m planning on using the Onewire ones straight in the fermentor to begin with until my welder gets the thermowell fitted.
Being a novice at programming, it looks as if this should be a pretty basic set-up for the BrewPi.
I have a non jacketed conical and it uses immersion coils to chill. I live in central Texas (HOT) so I have a glycol setup that pumps chilled glycol into the coils. I use the cooling SSR to turn the pump on and off, you’d be doing the same setup just manipulating a valve vs pump.
I am not sure how optimal the BPi is going to work for you since it’s not really setup (at this time) to use only a single probe to measure temps and adjust things. There is work on code to allow for single probe type setups like ours, but it’s not there yet.
For my setup I find that even with the ability to adjust the cooling water temp I still require a heat source to get it to keep with +/- 1-2 degree of set temp. Once the newer code is released we should see much better results, but I wanted to give you a heads up so you are not upset when the device isn’t as tight as you may want.