I am beginning to draw up my plans for a half barrel, 3 vessel, electric RIMS brewhouse. My thinking is that I would have 3 4500w elements in the system, one each in the HLT, BK, and RIMS tube. I would probably want to interlock two of them to prevent firing all three at the same time and tripping the breaker. If I were to do that, my thinking is that I would not be firing the RIMS tube and BK at the same time, so I could wire them up to be exclusive using a 3-way switch (like in Kal's controller).
The other choice is maybe have a simple MCU programmed to allow me to arbitrarily choose two elements to fire. So in that instance I could even have two in the BK and HLT with the option to fire one or both. As long as I only fire two at a time I should be golden. I don't think the firmware would be difficult for something like that.
Interested in thoughts on either approach. I realize the latter would be a bit more complicated, but the majority of the controller would indistinguishable from Kal's. It's just some additional switching.
The other choice is maybe have a simple MCU programmed to allow me to arbitrarily choose two elements to fire. So in that instance I could even have two in the BK and HLT with the option to fire one or both. As long as I only fire two at a time I should be golden. I don't think the firmware would be difficult for something like that.
Interested in thoughts on either approach. I realize the latter would be a bit more complicated, but the majority of the controller would indistinguishable from Kal's. It's just some additional switching.