I have a fermentation freezer with heater (and cooler). I have been using it OK with the quickstart fermentation fridge and could switch ok between fridge mode and beer mode. There is also a manual mode - i don’t understand what that does?
Also, I was reading on the control chain page about a dynamic fridge setpoint which I then set up, I believe correctly. Can the Ferment Assistant widget be used when the control chains are set up for dynamic fridge setpoint? Switching between different modes - beer/fridge/manual seems to have jumbled up my blocks so I can’t get back to my dynamic fridge mode without remaking the control chain.
It is useful for me to have fridge mode (for when i used the freezer as a spare fridge) plus one beer mode.
Thanks for any guidance.
The temperature assistant stores PID settings for both fridge and beer modes, and will warn you if active PID settings don’t match the current mode. Manual mode disables the warning.
Not really, as the assistant is made to help with switching between fridge and beer modes, and a dynamic fridge setpoint fundamentally can’t implement fridge mode. It depends on both fridge and beer temperature to function.
Practically speaking, this is not an issue. With improvements to the PID block, we found direct beer control to more accurate (and much simpler) than a dynamic fridge setpoint. Especially if you’re planning on regular switches between beer and fridge mode, I’d recommend sticking with the default control chains.
Thank you Bob. That does sound best to leave it with beer/fridge mode only and i can tweak the beer mode settings to optimize as needed.
I have got a separate (chest) freezer now for serving from. It has no heater and I have in any case run out of GPIO pins.
I’m trying to understand how I create a new dashboard for a cooler only fridge. If I use the quickstart fridge without beer sensor the wizard wants me to add a heater output which I don’t have spare pins for.
Please could you advise what’s the simplest way of achieving a cooler only fridge?
If you create a Mock Pins block, you can assign the heater pins there. After completing the wizard, you can either leave it (and let the system pretend you have a heater) or remove the heating PID, PWM, actuator, and mock pins.
Fab, that’s worked thanks Bob.