Frodus's 10-gal electric HERMS with HMI/SCADA

[frodus17]

Everything is wired up, powered up and I've started testing. The Temp sensors are all working and power and connections to everything look good. I can connect to my wifi network and control throughout the house (and remotely to preheat my HLT for brew day after work, HAHA). The Pumps are run off of one of the alarm outputs of the PID controllers and turn the SSR on/off accordingly. I found a nice little start/stop/reset timer and embedded into my dashboard. I can add functionality to my control panel later as they are needed. I still have 1 Temp sensor input, 4 digital inputs and 6 3A relay outputs I can use.

So now I just need to wire the heating elements and run the Autotune on the BK and HLT PID controllers and I think I can start brewing again. Also need to mount the 2 pumps and control panel to my brew stand.

Here's the control panel HMI as it is, Simple and easy to manage:

 

[frodus17]

Got some final wiring done on the panel and then mounted it to my brew stand (Wire shelving). Also mounted the LCD touchscreen in the garage and ran power for it. Finished wiring the heating elements for the twistlock plugs. Basically everything is ready to test right now and I'll have basic brew functionality. I can add more bells and whistles later if needed. Here's some pictures:

 

[frodus17]

Here's a little video of running some water in it on Monday

 

[jcav]

Excellent job! Really slick rig. Time to brew!

John

 

[frodus17]

Thanks Jcav! I'm excited. It's been a labor of love the last year or so.

Going to hunt down a recipe tomorrow and get the grains and some extra hose at the LHBS. Then do the PID autotune on both PID's with about 7 gallons in each (which is going to be my normal batch size). Also have to mount the pumps to something so they're not on the ground, but easily accessible.

And then clean everything for a couple hours so it's ready for a Sunday brew day.

 

[jcav]

Good luck tomorrow on the maiden voyage! Lets us know how your first brew day went!

John

 

[frodus17]

It was a brewless weekend. I dry fired my heating element in the HLT, thinking I had plugged the BK into the BK output. It's toast (and it tripped the GFCI). Need to replace it.

I spent time getting the brew area ready. I mounted hangers for my mash paddles that my father made, and also an apron my mother made. Got the pumps temporarily mounted to a piece of wood and put twistlock ends on them.

I ended up working on another project (An electric race kart) for a while.

 

[ancientmariner52]

It was a brewless weekend. I dry fired my heating element in the HLT, thinking I had plugged the BK into the BK output. It's toast (and it tripped the GFCI). Need to replace it.

I spent time getting the brew area ready. I mounted hangers for my mash paddles that my father made, and also an apron my mother made. Got the pumps temporarily mounted to a piece of wood and put twistlock ends on them.

I ended up working on another project (An electric race kart) for a while.

I am certain I would do this also, if it were even remotely possible. I therefore used a range plug on the HLT, and a twist-lock plug on the BK. So idiot-proof even I can't mess it up.

 

[frodus17]

Yeah, I have marked them now, and should be good. I forgot I had switched them when I wanted to test PID 2 with the element in the BK. I should have left the other unplugged. Color coding them the next chance I get

It's no biggy, just delayed a bit.

 

[frodus17]

Brewed a Dead Guy Clone on the system this last weekend and it went OK considering I hadn't really done a run through it. I did have some issues though.

A few things I ran into:

• My wifi signal in the garage sucks. I kept seeing no communications between the Touchscreen computer and the Control panel. It was because my router wasn't really set up right (2.4 and 5 had the same SSID, so I split them up so the 2.4 was being used by further away devices). I also installed a WiFi repeater in the garage to boost the signal. Things are 100% now, and I never loose connection.
• I don't have an on/off switch for the PID's (just auto/manual), which would have been useful. I updated my HMI screen to add that feature. I also put a status LED indicator on the screen rather than the Current. I just want to know if it's ON or not.
• The HLT element failed and tripped the GFCI. I measured a resistance between the case and the element terminals, so it's toast. I ordered 3 more from ebrewsupply and will be replacing 1 and keeping the other 2 as spares if anything happens.
• I need to run autotune. It doesn't quite ramp to temp like it should.
• The "timer" I'm using is just a webpage that is embedded from some other site. I'd like this to be as standalone as possible. Needs fixing/coding.

So with the above problems, I wasn't able to maintain my temperature in the HLT (insulated), and I didn't recirculate through the HERMS, and the temp dropped. This lowered my efficiency and my wort gravity was fairly low. I added some light DME to the BK to bring it up and just about hit my target OG.

I was pretty happy with the pumps and control overall. I wasn't expecting it to go perfect, it was my first AG batch, after-all.

So once the new HLT Element is installed, I should be good for another brew session.

 

[frodus17]

Added on/off button and an indicator light. Right now the indicator follows the SSR output. I might just change to, is the PID ON or OFF. Maybe Both would be good, so I know it's LIVE, and I know if it's pulsing on/off. The thing about these, is I can change it however I want, without cutting new holes or doing a ton of wiring. It's just a few components on a dashboard and voila.

Also, before, I was using a program called mbusd. It's a Modbus RTU to TCP converter program, but I have to run a script every boot, and it's also a little slower. Switched back to using Modbus RTU direct from MyScada software. That, coupled with the access point in the garage, things are much faster for response.

I'm considering some more controls via the RPi. I'm looking at Rexcontrols for the RPi. They have a fairly cheap module that allows some PLC style programming. I'd like to do a start/stop timer with that, and also maybe some smart controls based on some logic steps. Like, when I switch to stop, write 0 to the Power percent, so when it restarts, it starts at 0%, not previous value.

Here's the new screen (WIP):

 

[jcav]

Looking really good, those indicator lights are a great addition!

John