ebay aquarium temp controller build

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mattd2 said:
Did you check it is a 110V version, looks like some have fallen for a good priced one only to find it was 220V.

Hey sorry for the slow reply. The eBay ad stated 110v and stc-1000. It looks just like the one I already have (same number of buttons) so I believe it is two stage. I have not received the one I ordered but will report back if anything is off with it. Also ill try to give a good link to the seller (so far I have been replying on my phone which is hard to do hyperlinks). Hope this helps.
 
here it is on homebrewfinds.com (great website by the way): link

and here is the ebay page, seller is 360leway: link

Let me know if the links don't work or if you noticed something that I did not regarding this particular temp controller. I look forward to receiving mine soon. $20 shipped is the cheapest I've found it.
 
Turns out I'm one of those (un)lucky guys that ordered a 110, got a 220, spent 2 weeks back-and-forth with the seller and ended up with the right controller and a spare that's sitting in my junk drawer. A little googling and it turns out the internet has figured out how to fix the 220! That said, I can't seem to find the BV301S09015 transformer I need in either reasonable quantities (1) or reasonable shipping charges (<4x cost).

I see that a few folks in this thread have done group buys before; does anyone still have a spare 110v transformer to sell? Thanks!
 
Just got my STC-1000 today and am a electrical wiring moron :drunk:. Please advise.

I've looked at the diagram on the back of the unit and it suggests that I could simply .......

1) Wire the mains input into 1 and 2.

2) Probe wires obviously go to 3 and 4.

3) Connect my 100 watt heating lamp directly into 5 and 6

4) Connect the power to freezer power directly into 7 and 8.

5) Turn my freezer thermostat onto MAX.

Is this method correct ? Or am I missing something ??

Any advice much appreciated.
 
Wheelspin said:
Just got my STC-1000 today and am a electrical wiring moron :drunk:. Please advise.

I've looked at the diagram on the back of the unit and it suggests that I could simply .......

1) Wire the mains input into 1 and 2.

2) Probe wires obviously go to 3 and 4.

3) Connect my 100 watt heating lamp directly into 5 and 6

4) Connect the power to freezer power directly into 7 and 8.

5) Turn my freezer thermostat onto MAX.

Is this method correct ? Or am I missing something ??

Any advice much appreciated.

It would work like that IF 5 6 7 8 were power sources and grounds. They are just two sides of a switch. Because of this you need to carry power to 5&7 to make 6&8 become switched hots.
 
OH NO !!!!!:confused:

I thought it looked too simple.

So what you're saying is that in addition to putting a LIVE into terminal 1, I would also have to bridge that same LIVE to 5 and 7 ?

What about the NEUTRAL ? Is it OK if I just have the NEUTRAL from the mains in terminal 2 ?

HELP !!!!!
 
Wheelspin said:
OH NO !!!!!:confused:

I thought it looked too simple.

So what you're saying is that in addition to putting a LIVE into terminal 1, I would also have to bridge that same LIVE to 5 and 7 ?

What about the NEUTRAL ? Is it OK if I just have the NEUTRAL from the mains in terminal 2 ?

HELP !!!!!

Black is Hot. White is Neutral. Black to 1, 5, & 7. White to 2. Now imagine coming from 6 & 8 with the black wire from your heater and fridge and then bringing their white wires back to the neutral. Draw it out. That way you are switching the hot before the appliance and providing a path back to neutral.
 
Hey Guys, Looking for some help. I built a chamber with an AC Unit. Wired my 220V Temp controller per the diagram in the first post and Just hooked it up. Have it set to 18.3C, the heat source is on but the AC is running. On the controller only the heat LED is on..Whats the deal? I searched and think my the relay is stuck but could it happen so quick...I just started it..thanks for the help in advance
 
Just got my STC-1000 today and am a electrical wiring moron :drunk:. Please advise.

I've looked at the diagram on the back of the unit and it suggests that I could simply .......

1) Wire the mains input into 1 and 2.

2) Probe wires obviously go to 3 and 4.

3) Connect my 100 watt heating lamp directly into 5 and 6

4) Connect the power to freezer power directly into 7 and 8.

5) Turn my freezer thermostat onto MAX.

Is this method correct ? Or am I missing something ??

Any advice much appreciated.

As others have said, the 5/6 and 7/8 terminal sets don't provide power to the heating/cooling devices, they're just switches. You need to provide power to each switch, and neutral to the other side of the heating and cooling outlets. You can try using one of the many wiring diagrams for it. There's one in the first post of this thread. Here's another, with separate receptacles for heating and cooling.

stc-1000-wiring-diagram.jpg


Hey Guys, Looking for some help. I built a chamber with an AC Unit. Wired my 220V Temp controller per the diagram in the first post and Just hooked it up. Have it set to 18.3C, the heat source is on but the AC is running. On the controller only the heat LED is on..Whats the deal? I searched and think my the relay is stuck but could it happen so quick...I just started it..thanks for the help in advance

Did you break the tab on the hot side of the receptacle? If you don't break the tab, both outlets will be hot anytime one of them has power. What are the start-up draws for your AC unit and heater?

download.php
 
Black is Hot. White is Neutral. Black to 1, 5, & 7. White to 2. Now imagine coming from 6 & 8 with the black wire from your heater and fridge and then bringing their white wires back to the neutral. Draw it out. That way you are switching the hot before the appliance and providing a path back to neutral.

So i put hot/live to 1, 5, and 7 and run them back to the hot/live wires of the freezer and heating elements.

Then I take the neutral wire from both the freezer and heating element, and run them into the terminal number 2 ???

If this is correct, thanks a million :ban:!!!!!!!! Please confirm.
 
So i put hot/live to 1, 5, and 7 and run them back to the hot/live wires of the freezer and heating elements.

Then I take the neutral wire from both the freezer and heating element, and run them into the terminal number 2 ???

If this is correct, thanks a million :ban:!!!!!!!! Please confirm.

From the way you phrased that I'm not sure that you quite have it right. Just to clarify, the incoming hot will be split 3 ways and go to terminals 1,5, and 7, and then a wire will go from terminal 6 to the hot side of the heating element, and from terminal 8 to the hot side of the freezer outlet. The incoming neutral will split 3 ways and go to terminal 2, the neutral side of the heating element, and the neutral side of the freezer. If you're still unsure, just look at the wiring diagram I posted above.
 
Did you break the tab on the hot side of the receptacle? If you don't break the tab, both outlets will be hot anytime one of them has power. What are the start-up draws for your AC unit and heater?

download.php

I did not break the tabs so that must be it... Actually started thinking about that last night while over at a friends house having some drinks. I'm not 100% sure of the draws but I know that the AC unit is a 6500btu and my heat source is a 60w light bulb for now. Thanks for the help
 
Hi All,

I completed this build recently and have to thank everyone for the advice! This thread is awesome. Granted, I have not reviewed every 318 pages so I am sorry if this has already been illustrated.

I am looking for advice on where to place the temp probe. Right now I have it sitting in a cup of water in the back of my stand up freezer. I don't think this is helping to keep ferm temps as low as they need to be.

Can anyone share pics oh how they have attached their probe to the fermenter. And what do you do when you have multiple fermentations going on? Assuming you attach to the most recent addition to the chamber?

Thanks everyone!
 
I mount my probe to the side of the carboy or fermenter. I also am playing around with thermowell.
I have taped the probe to the side of a carboy if it is the only fermenter in the chamber. So it would be as follows
Glass wall of carboy || Probe || Folded up old kitchen towel || packing tape

The kitchen towel ads insulation to help the sensor detect the glass-wort temp more than the air temp.
If I have two carboys in the chamber, I just put the sensor between the carboys with the same kitchen towel and sandwich the probe and towel with the carboys... works well...
 
I mount my probe to the side of the carboy or fermenter. I also am playing around with thermowell.
I have taped the probe to the side of a carboy if it is the only fermenter in the chamber. So it would be as follows
Glass wall of carboy || Probe || Folded up old kitchen towel || packing tape

The kitchen towel ads insulation to help the sensor detect the glass-wort temp more than the air temp.
If I have two carboys in the chamber, I just put the sensor between the carboys with the same kitchen towel and sandwich the probe and towel with the carboys... works well...

Perfect....thanks for the advice.
 
I use painters tape, which holds strong even under damp conditions but leaves no residue, to hold the probe right at the middle of the liquid volume on the outside of the better bottle. I put a piece of foam insulation over that with more blue tape. If I'm doing a double batch I'll sandwich the thermistor between the two fermenters and cover that area with a piece of foam on each side. I've dropped a sanitized probe thermometer into the beer and even at high krausen the difference between the surface reading and the internal reading was at most 2 °F (hotter on the inside). The insulation helps avoid thermal shocks from opening and the fridge and staring at the bubbling (that never gets old does it?).


I am looking for advice on where to place the temp probe.

Can anyone share pics oh how they have attached their probe to the fermenter. And what do you do when you have multiple fermentations going on? Assuming you attach to the most recent addition to the chamber?
 
Wheelspin said:
So i put hot/live to 1, 5, and 7 and run them back to the hot/live wires of the freezer and heating elements.

Then I take the neutral wire from both the freezer and heating element, and run them into the terminal number 2 ???

If this is correct, thanks a million :ban:!!!!!!!! Please confirm.

Kinda, maybe. Read what JuanMoore wrote and then go back to page 1 for the diagram.
 
Well, I just built my second one of these to control a rice cooker in order to make homemade yogurt. Very please with the result and can't wait to see how it performs. Thanks so much for this idea. My other one is controlling my fermentation chamber which is currently lagering a maibock. Couldn't do it without ya! Cheers all.

PS this is the controller I mentions a few posts back for $20 shipped. Turned out to be 110v as advertised as well as dual stage. Standard shipping time from hong kong. Thanks again don't know where I'd be without homebrewtalk community.
 
This thread is so informative thanks!
My STC-1000 is on a slow boat from China as we speak. I want to ask has anyone used one to control a water pump?

I ask because SWMBO won't allow me another fridge for Beer, apparently one chest freezer for beer purposes is enough... I don't get it but she makes the rules.
So my plan is to make a fermentation chamber out of insulation and plywood, put an ice chest on top, put a pump in that hooked up to the STC-1000 and use frozen milk jugs full of water to cool water pumped into the fermentation chamber.
I plan on putting a coil of copper tube inside a 3" pvc pipe with a computer fan circulating air through the tube as a heat exchanger inside the chamber.

Does this seem like a workable plan?
 
This thread is so informative thanks!
My STC-1000 is on a slow boat from China as we speak. I want to ask has anyone used one to control a water pump?

I ask because SWMBO won't allow me another fridge for Beer, apparently one chest freezer for beer purposes is enough... I don't get it but she makes the rules.
So my plan is to make a fermentation chamber out of insulation and plywood, put an ice chest on top, put a pump in that hooked up to the STC-1000 and use frozen milk jugs full of water to cool water pumped into the fermentation chamber.
I plan on putting a coil of copper tube inside a 3" pvc pipe with a computer fan circulating air through the tube as a heat exchanger inside the chamber.

Does this seem like a workable plan?

Seems like it would work to me.
 
This thread is so informative thanks!
My STC-1000 is on a slow boat from China as we speak. I want to ask has anyone used one to control a water pump?

I ask because SWMBO won't allow me another fridge for Beer, apparently one chest freezer for beer purposes is enough... I don't get it but she makes the rules.
So my plan is to make a fermentation chamber out of insulation and plywood, put an ice chest on top, put a pump in that hooked up to the STC-1000 and use frozen milk jugs full of water to cool water pumped into the fermentation chamber.
I plan on putting a coil of copper tube inside a 3" pvc pipe with a computer fan circulating air through the tube as a heat exchanger inside the chamber.

Does this seem like a workable plan?

I use it to control water pump, works great but my design is little different, you can find more detail in my thread here (go to post 18 for summary):
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/office-water-cooler-temp-control-289108/
Its walk away system, just punch desire temp in stc and it will keep set up temp between 55 and 90F, i could probably insulate box and get it in to high 40 for lagers, o and i sold the idea of having water cooler in the house to my
wife by making it actually usable for original purpose (you know drinking water)
 
Wheelspin said:
Just got my STC-1000 today and am a electrical wiring moron :drunk:. Please advise.

I've looked at the diagram on the back of the unit and it suggests that I could simply .......

1) Wire the mains input into 1 and 2.

2) Probe wires obviously go to 3 and 4.

3) Connect my 100 watt heating lamp directly into 5 and 6

4) Connect the power to freezer power directly into 7 and 8.

5) Turn my freezer thermostat onto MAX.

Is this method correct ? Or am I missing something ??

Any advice much appreciated.

I like the diagram and video here:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/stc-1000-wiring-diagram-question-362214/

I'm a complete noob to wiring and that worked perfectly for me. Currently holding temps for a little starter batch and tomorrow it gets 5 gal of holiday ale...
 
toddzio said:
This thread is so informative thanks!
My STC-1000 is on a slow boat from China as we speak. I want to ask has anyone used one to control a water pump?

I ask because SWMBO won't allow me another fridge for Beer, apparently one chest freezer for beer purposes is enough... I don't get it but she makes the rules.
So my plan is to make a fermentation chamber out of insulation and plywood, put an ice chest on top, put a pump in that hooked up to the STC-1000 and use frozen milk jugs full of water to cool water pumped into the fermentation chamber.
I plan on putting a coil of copper tube inside a 3" pvc pipe with a computer fan circulating air through the tube as a heat exchanger inside the chamber.

Does this seem like a workable plan?

That sounds good to me. The other option would be having the carboy in a water bath and having the copper coil in there. I was actually thinking about doing that with glycol and my kegerator freezer before I snagged some minifridges.
 
Just finished wiring mine tonight, and it is working correctly! This was my first foray into electrical wiring, so I'm pretty pleased with myself, haha.


Thanks everyone for such a great thread.
 
Just got mine completed last week. Pretty easy to do. 1 hot, 1 cold outlet. The Cord is going out the back so I can sit it flat on top of the mini-fridge I'm going to use for my fermentation chamber.:ban:

The digital display is not that crooked...but the picture makes it look like it is.

Ebay Temp Controller.jpg
 
I have one of these working as we speak. I'm upgrading my freezer capacity to two units and was wondering...
I purchased a second temp controller. I have a broken Black box Pow-R-Boot power hub (https://surpluscityliquidators.com/view_product/164469/530) that is rated at 15 amps. Could I gut it and mount two temp controllers for the two freezers? I guess the real question is can you run two freezers of of one 15 amp power cable?
Thanks,

Tx
 
If one were to use this type of controller combined with a chest freezer for cooling and a brew belt for heating and taping the insulated probe to a carboy, where would be the best location for the belt and for the probe? I wouldn't want to get a false reading due to the carboy material (glass or plastic) heating up due to the brew belt. Any thoughts?
 
seedubxj said:
If one were to use this type of controller combined with a chest freezer for cooling and a brew belt for heating and taping the insulated probe to a carboy, where would be the best location for the belt and for the probe? I wouldn't want to get a false reading due to the carboy material (glass or plastic) heating up due to the brew belt. Any thoughts?

Belt would be best near the bottom, for reasons of convection, but not so low that it'll be around a mass of trub instead of liquid. So around 4 inches or so from the bottom...

And I would put the probe maybe 4-6 inches from the top of the liquid level.
 
What are your thoughts on putting the temp probe inside a white labs yeast bottle with water or alcohol instead of taping it to the side of the fermenter? I think it might let the probe sit in just enough of a mass to cut down on cycling with out having to tape it to what ever you are fermenting in.
 
What are your thoughts on putting the temp probe inside a white labs yeast bottle with water or alcohol instead of taping it to the side of the fermenter? I think it might let the probe sit in just enough of a mass to cut down on cycling with out having to tape it to what ever you are fermenting in.

That works fine for a kegerator, but isn't ideal for actively fermenting beer. Since the temperature in the fermenter can be 5-7+ degrees above ambient, that's where you want to get your reading. Tape it to the side of the carboy.
 
zachattack said:
That works fine for a kegerator, but isn't ideal for actively fermenting beer. Since the temperature in the fermenter can be 5-7+ degrees above ambient, that's where you want to get your reading. Tape it to the side of the carboy.

Thanks, I was just board and thinking again. I know that can be dangerous.
 
i was excited about the prospect of this temp controller, so i got one from ebay and put the whole thing in a project box from radio shack. one plug is switched for heating and the other for cooling. i have yet to build up my fermentation chamber that i'll use this on, but preliminary tests confirmed that the unit worked great. there is a 0.3 deg C differential on this thing, so it is pretty accurate and easy to set. i used a 14 gauge extension cord for all the wires. it does read in celcius, but that's OK by me.

all of the parts:
DSC00889.jpg


did some sloppy cut outs and wired it up:
DSC00899.jpg


power cord and sensor gives plenty of slack:
DSC00892.jpg


close up of the temp controller:
DSC00896.jpg


powered up:
DSC00890.jpg


my wiring diagram (sloppy also). i only used one wire nut to join the hot wires as you can see in one of the pics above. also, very important to break off the jumper tab on the hot side so you can control each outlet independently.
possibleschematic.jpg

Wouldn't this one work? It's in degrees fahrenheit

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AC-110-120V...628?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a6626468c
 
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