So if as if I didn't have enough stuff to work on I decided to start work on a hop dropper system since now the BrewTroller has a profile for it.
My plan is to have a disc with 8 vertical tubes on it that will use a high tourqe servo to rotate and drop the hops. I plan on using a 8 pin microcontroller to read the drop pulse from the BT and advance to the next tube. I am going to use a microswitch to tell the MCU that it's reached the next tube. The disc is 6" wide and the tubes are going to be 1"OD and 6" high. Since I only use pellet hops I think they will be plenty big. I can always make it with taller tubes if needed. This is mostly a prototype and could be scaled up for hole hops.
Here you can see the disc that holds all the tubes, I cut all the pieces out of .220 thick acrylic, they all look foggy because I still have the protective plastic on them.
Here is the base disc that the tubes will ride on top of and holds the servo.
Here is the servo installed into the base disc
And finally the whole thing put together, I'm just waiting for my tubes to come in from mcmaster and then I can build it the rest of the way.
My plan is to have a disc with 8 vertical tubes on it that will use a high tourqe servo to rotate and drop the hops. I plan on using a 8 pin microcontroller to read the drop pulse from the BT and advance to the next tube. I am going to use a microswitch to tell the MCU that it's reached the next tube. The disc is 6" wide and the tubes are going to be 1"OD and 6" high. Since I only use pellet hops I think they will be plenty big. I can always make it with taller tubes if needed. This is mostly a prototype and could be scaled up for hole hops.
Here you can see the disc that holds all the tubes, I cut all the pieces out of .220 thick acrylic, they all look foggy because I still have the protective plastic on them.
Here is the base disc that the tubes will ride on top of and holds the servo.
Here is the servo installed into the base disc
And finally the whole thing put together, I'm just waiting for my tubes to come in from mcmaster and then I can build it the rest of the way.