A little ways into my Raspberry Pi Strangebrew Elsinore build and thought I's share.

First post.

I haven't been brewing for long at all. Only three batches in and wasn't thrilled at how different they tasted.

Already having a fermentation chamber, I didn't think that was my problem. But I did know that my brewday temps were the hardest to control on the stove. So going forware, I knew I wanted electric BIAB, and knew I wanted to make it as easily controllable and repeatable as possible so I did some research and found Strangebrew.

I had a huge enclosure and an extra touchscreen monitor available to I decided I'd try to build one with a built in monitor so I wouldn't have to rely on a network connection. I haven't gotten many pictures thus far, but I'll start taking more.

Welcome to HBT Fisty.

Of course more gadgets will make your beer taste better. How else do we justify all this stuff?

So i have been reading a lot of thread on this kind of set up as I ma planning to do something similar. The only thing i would say is that there seems to have been some issues running the system using a monitor rather than via wifi. Apparently the pi can crash frequently while running the brewery and the monitor and running it via the web UI is the best way to bypass that. Just a heads up.

I will definitley be following, as there is a lack of build threads SBE.

Dolomieu said:

Apparently the pi can crash frequently while running the brewery and the monitor and running it via the web UI is the best way to bypass that.

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I've already done one brew without the use of the web UI. Didn't have any issues. I'll have to do a couple more "dry" runs just to make sure. Thanks for the heads up.

That's good to hear.

I look forward to seeing more of your build. maybe some shots of the insides too?

Dolomieu said:

That's good to hear.

I look forward to seeing more of your build. maybe some shots of the insides too?

Click to expand...

I'm wiring everything up today. Just getting the Pi Zero configured and then I'll start taking progress shots.

So, I didn't get quite as far as I wanted to yesterday, and I'm questioning some elements of my design.

I got most of the high voltage wired up but I'm not liking the wire coming in for service. It's just cumbersome. I think I want to put a receptacle there and make it able to disconnected but that's another $40-$60 bucks, so I'll probably live with it. Also, I think I want to wire in a way to do 120v with the same panel if I have a brewday at a friends house. But that will require buying another heating element and triclamp enclosure and having two different cables for bringing power in to the enclosure so that'll be further down the road.

I'm pretty much following P-J's diagram found in this post, https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=264251.

I didn't think about wiring up the monitor to a switch, but I think it should automatically power off when it doesn't sense a signal, so I'm okay with it getting power all the time. The Pi will turn on with the first switch, the second controls the contactor for the heating element, and the third turns the 12v power supply on and off.

I think controlling the 12v power supply with the switch was a mistake, because it will control the fan (right by the SSR) and the pump. So if I turn off the pump, it will turn off the fan. Shouldn't be too big of a deal. I can just unplug the pump if I need the fan on and not the pump. I might change the jumper for the power supply to be 24v for the pump for better performance and add another 12v for the fan to just run at all times. Yeah...that's what I'll do. Love ideas that come as your typing stuff out. One of the benefits of doing this.

The little power supply on the bottom is a 5v 2a USB charger that I broke out of a wall wort and wired up directly.

I hate the red 120v running over everything like that but I didn't want to loose any more length of the cable by pulling in another ~4 inches to get right angles.

I should be able to get the Pi wired up today. Hopefully the 12v panel mount barrels show up today. Funny how fast room starts running out, even in a giant box like this. I probably overkill with the terminal blocks, but I guess I have the room so why not.

Edit: Yes, that's a cutting board for a backplate.

Love It! Keep the updates coming!!

Dolomieu said:

Apparently the pi can crash frequently while running the brewery and the monitor and running it via the web UI is the best way to bypass that. Just a heads up.

Click to expand...

The performance of SBE has improved significantly with v2.0. So I hope this fixes the issues with RPi crashing.

So I haven't had a chance to update my version yet. My Pi isn't networked since I use the monitor, but I'll get that done soon.

Here's what she looks like when up and running. My cheap Fotek SSR bit the dust during first use. I have it on a heat sink, with thermal paste, and next to fan but it still didn't make it through the first brew. I had it opened because I was testing a larger 24v power supply for my pump. It worked great but the pump was really getting warm so I switched down to 12v and it was pumping plenty of volume still. I think it was pumping nearly as much and probably the reason it was getting so warm was because 24v wasn't pump the water fast enough so 12v will work fine.

Also, If you look closely at my first photos, you'll notice that I'm an idiot and wired my switches wrong. I forgot that I had turned them 90° so my wiring would come out the sides, but wired them as if they were up and down. Easy fix though.

To my surprise, touch was "working" without any drivers. The only issue is that the touch is turned 90° compared to the screen. So if I touch left and right, the mouse goes up and down and visa versa. I've done a small amount of googling and I think it should be an easy enough fix.

Once I get that fixed, I'll see if I can find a touch screen keyboard app of some kind.

Overall, I'm pretty excited about it all. The finish is just around the corner.

Looks great! You'll have to document your brew day results!

Nice looking setup!

I've been using SBE since last summer and haven't had any issues (well, none that weren't self induced ... )

Any updates?