BCS Ideas, Brewing and Ferm. cabinet distances

Just doing some pre-planning here.
I want to move to a BCS brewing system in the near future and I want to monitor two fermentation units with it.
My problem is I brew in my kitchen and my fermentation units are 50+ feet away in another room.
Since the ferm. units are so far away is it even feasible to include then in this system?

You could probably set up Arduino and Xbee or something at the ferm chamber to just connect it wirelessly to BCS? Completely talking out of my ass btw.

aubiecat said:

Just doing some pre-planning here.
I want to move to a BCS brewing system in the near future and I want to monitor two fermentation units with it.
My problem is I brew in my kitchen and my fermentation units are 50+ feet away in another room.
Since the ferm. units are so far away is it even feasible to include then in this system?

Click to expand...

If the BCS is only going to control the fermenters, why not just place it in the other room with them? Do you need the BCS in the kitchen for something?

DrewF said:

If the BCS is only going to control the fermenters, why not just place it in the other room with them? Do you need the BCS in the kitchen for something?

Click to expand...

I brew in the kitchen. My brewing system will be controlled by the BCS.
The BCS will need to be closer to the brewing due to the critical functions it will control.

This thread is giving me some good ideas.

Not knowing details about your system, or whether you plan to permanently mount the BCS, here are some thoughts:

Maybe you could use two BCS460s instead of one BCS462.

Maybe the BCS could live in the fermentation room and you move it to the kitchen only when you're brewing.

Or, control the fermenters with regular Johnson or Love controllers and leave the BCS in the kitchen permanently.

Cat5 (ethernet) cabling can be used as extension cords for temperature probes and relay control wires. 50' is a long way, though.

Looking over the links in your sig, I guess I do know a bit about your system. You do good work. How are you planning on updating your eBIAB system to incorporate the BCS?

Are you going to monitor as in just watch temps or control them too? Running the temp probe off 50ft is no big deal. If you are going to turn on off a heat or cooling system you need to decide where that device gets plugged in. A 50ft power cord back to your BCS control box or perhaps you run the small 5v BCS stuff off to a box with the ssr/power closer to your ferm chamber. I went down this hole a few weeks ago and have a similar distance from my brewery. My challenge this time of year is I need heat to maintain ferm temps. In the end i just bought a johnson controller and I'm happy with the results for my current needs. I decided that if I do anything different I'll just build another control box with a 460 just for ferm control. I'm already controlling 6 outlets on my brewery and don't have space for more and I don't want to swap out power cords. It's cool to have everything in one box but seems like an extra layer of complexity to control 2 things that to me are separate processes.

Im Planing on doing some thing similar. My BCS is located at my brewery in the garage and my room where I ferment is about a 20' away to run wires along the wall to get to the room. My plan is to use a DIGI16 expansion board in the fermentation room to control heating and cooling of the fermenters. the problem with this is that the DIGI16 does not support more temp probes. So what I'm going to to is put in four switches or soem type of selector switch in my control panel that will let me switch from the probes monitoring the brewing process and the probes monitoring the fermentation process.

In the fermentation room I'll put in XLR disconnects for the temp probes, and connect them to the selector switch with a CAT6 like cable that has 8 wires. 4 for the temp probes, 1 for power, 1 for ground ,1 EO, and one of E1.

There the DIGI can control 8SSR's to power heating and cooling to up to 4 fermenters.

I still have not worked out all the details, Im still in the planing phase. I have to get the Glycol system Up and running first before I move on to this one. But the wheels are turning.

Curious to see how others have done it. Jon W might be a good person to contact about it, I think he has some thing like this set up. It my be on the ECC forum.

Something like this
http://shop.willyselectronics.com/b...tch-box-2-position-not-cat5-rated/4,6087.html

DrewF said:

Looking over the links in your sig, I guess I do know a bit about your system. You do good work. How are you planning on updating your eBIAB system to incorporate the BCS?

Click to expand...

I'm going to update the current system with a new control box and add an HLT. My living room and kitchen are open concept so I see my 52" TV/HTPC from the kitchen. My RF keyboard and mouse can control the PC from the bar in my kitchen. I like the idea of the BCS to control everything via network and monitor/control my fermentation units from anywhere via internet all run through one GUI.

I think beluedog already has all this figured out in his thread. He is going to put the BCS near his fermentation units and control his brew rig via CAT5. He is doing exactly, with his system, what I want to do with mine. I suggest anyone that is trying to accomplish the same thing subscribe to his thread and watch the build.