Mike's Brew Shop Fermentation System Project

h1. Mike's Brew Shop Fermentation System

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The goal of this project is to create a beer fermentation system that is temperature controlled using off the shelf hardware (and doing a bit of soldering, some electronics and building a few things) and open source software and by trying to keep the cost down.  The following picture gives the *"Big Picture"* of the project. For the current status of the project see "Current Status" section.

This is a DIY project. *I'm in no mean responsible for your mistakes, so know what your are doing. Liability is not on me, electricity is dangerous!!!*

h2. +Big Picture Of The Project+

!{width:70%}http://173.177.31.197:10084/attachments/download/18/Big_Picture.jpg!

h2. Description

In the fermentation system, the Arduino Uno control a pump which sends the cooled liquid inside the 50' cooper coil.  The coil is cooling the water inside the bucket surrounding the carboy, hence cooling the wort inside the carboy. The "Assembly" will be located into an insulated chamber to help keep the temperature down, lowering the load on the cooling device. The temperature we are aiming for is between 10°C and 18°C in a steady state manner, by providing a setpoint to the Arduino Uno controller. The first version of the temperature control algorithm is based on the reading of the temperature of the wort inside the carboy using the thermowell. The algorithm is simply an on/off state, based on a hysteresis value, which is a parameter that the user can set and send to the controller.

Using the RF communication, all the readings of all the parameters are sent to the server (Raspberry Pi) and logged into a Influxdb database.  A web based application is used to set the various parameters on the controller via the RF communication.

h2. Hardware

h3. Non-electronic

The [[Non-electonic hardware]] wiki page list all the non-electronic hardware required for this project. It also explains how the hardware was put together where it applies.

h3. Electronic

h3. Tools required

A *beer fermentation system* is composed of:

* *1 aruino uno board* (and all the required hardware is described in the Wiki tab)

* *1 pump* 

* *3 thermocouples*

* *1 50' cooling coil*

* *1 big bucket*

* *1 6.5 gal carboy*

* *1 thermowell*

* *1 fermentation chamber*

* *1 cooled liquid source* (in my case it's a keezer)

There is one thermocouple inside the beer wort, one in the surrounding water that cools the wort and one in the fermentation chamber to get the ambiant temperature.

The pump control is base upon these 3 temperature. The controller receives a setpoint and try to maintain it reliably and accuratly. In version 0.0.1 only the temperature inside the thermowell that measures the beer wort temperature will be used to control the pump.

Communitcation with the server (*raspberry pi*) is done using *nRF24l01* board and it's corresponding libraries. More information is available in the Wiki.

h2. Software

h3. Controller

* Developement environment and setup

* Source code

* Deploying firmware on the controller

h3. Server

* Operating system for the raspberry pi

* Libraries used in this project

* Source code to send/receive data to the Arduino Uno controller

* Grafana

* ...

h2. Cost

There is also a *cost* section in the Wiki for those who are willing to put a system like this together. Costs are going to be presented in a table, with links where I've purchased the item if applicable.

h2. External Links