NEW StrangeBrew Elsinore Thread

[HBrew71]

Hello Everybody! I was wondering what you guys are using for the control panel box. How are you mounting the pi in it? My panel will have the pi, one SainSmart 8-channel relay board, and 24V transformer for the valves. How are you making the connections more persistent? Are you using the breadboard or something else? Thanks for any help in advance!

 

[jangevaa]

Hello Everybody! I was wondering what you guys are using for the control panel box. How are you mounting the pi in it?

I use risers and mount my BBB directly to my control panel backplate. I'm guessing you could do something very similar for your pi.

How are you making the connections more persistent? Are you using the breadboard or something else? Thanks for any help in advance!

Some sort of soldered prototyping board is your best bet. Maybe something like this if you need a lot of space. http://www.adafruit.com/products/1135

 

[HBrew71]

Thanks jangeeva! This helps.

 

[DougEdey]

I see the issue, you set the time to 0, so it'll never come on. The hysteria time is the minimum time to have the output on or off for, this prevents cycling the output and blowing outputs. I've pushed changes to force this to be at least 1.0

 

[Mikeliverpooluk]

Doug just tested it - works great! Apologies I assumed set a 0 it would be just go on and off instantly with zero delay. I was going to set it at 5 mins anyway for my compressor so should of just used my real life settings. Now time to get on ebay and start ordering parts for my control panel. Will post some pics when all built. Will do a couple of brews then maybe go to the next stage with volume meters and ph meter. Very content for now though being able to brew from the armchair!
Thanks for all your hard work
Mike

 

[cank]

Hello Everybody! I was wondering what you guys are using for the control panel box. How are you mounting the pi in it? My panel will have the pi, one SainSmart 8-channel relay board, and 24V transformer for the valves. How are you making the connections more persistent? Are you using the breadboard or something else? Thanks for any help in advance!

Went to radio shack for small solder breadboards. Soldered resistor in then a series of pins for all my temp probes. On the other board I soldered breakout pins for 12 power, 5v power, ph, and gpio-therm pin out to my main panel.
Used vinyl stand offs from HD to mount pi and sainsmart. Used a plastic 4x4 cover to mount the breakout boards.

View attachment 1422487872659.jpg

 

[cank]

Here is the back of one of those boards.

View attachment 1422488375177.jpg

 

[DougEdey]

I'm working on a fairly substantial update for this upcoming week, and I'm looking for people to help out with some testing, all you need to do is: provide me with a beerXML file of a recipe (or several) that you know well, send me a private message with it, and then I'll do some testing, and send them back and ask you to confirm that the recipe i provide back matches the details in the one you provided.

This is so I can get extra sets of eyes to look at the output and make sure that I haven't missed anything.

 

[Swab]

I'm working on a fairly substantial update for this upcoming week, and I'm looking for people to help out with some testing, all you need to do is: provide me with a beerXML file of a recipe (or several) that you know well, send me a private message with it, and then I'll do some testing, and send them back and ask you to confirm that the recipe i provide back matches the details in the one you provided.

This is so I can get extra sets of eyes to look at the output and make sure that I haven't missed anything.

are you looking for complex recipes Doug? Or will any old recipe do?

 

[zombiekai]

DougEdey,
This is a great project. I have a single kettle set up running as a prototype for a eHERM system. Worked out most of the bugs. Is there a way move stuff around in the UI? I can't read both temps and pumps at the same time but I have free space right of he gauges I thought I had done it in the past.
Thank you for you awesome project.

 

[DougEdey]

are you looking for complex recipes Doug? Or will any old recipe do?

Anything, I've created a parser that implements all of BeerXML 1.0 (going to do more work for the newer BeerXML standards [if/when finalized]) and I want to make sure I catch all the peculiarities of different implementations.

 

[DougEdey]

DougEdey,
This is a great project. I have a single kettle set up running as a prototype for a eHERM system. Worked out most of the bugs. Is there a way move stuff around in the UI? I can't read both temps and pumps at the same time but I have free space right of he gauges I thought I had done it in the past.
Thank you for you awesome project.

The is ongoing work to improve the UI, the upgrade that allows you to re-arrange the PIDs/temps will be extended to include the pumps and timers in the future.

You can hide inputs to show more on the top line. But all the temps/pumps/timers will be shown on the screen.

 

[DeadHead_Brewering]

Doug,

Excellent work on this project. I've been lurking for quite awhile now. I think I will pull the trigger when the new Raspberry Pi 2 is available.
Anyhoo, attached is a beer.xml recipe of a beer I brew often. If you need more, I can give you additional.

Thanks again for your hard work!

Regards,

Robert

View attachment RobertsMild.xml

 

[petewa]

here is a 10 gallon beer i have just made....

View attachment barrel-aged-stout.xml

 

[DougEdey]

Thanks everyone, I have enough recipes now. I'll be working on the recipe stuff for a bit now.

 

[cank]

For those of you running Raspberry Pi's
The new linux Kernal has a new Device Tree setup:
For info read:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=97314

To get temp probes to work with a new update you must put this text in config.txt.
first run

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

then place this in the file

dtoverlay=w1-gpio

I had to build a new card image and could not get any of my sensors to show up last night. This took some digging and hope it helps some others out...

 

[JayElDubya]

Oh man, great info. Thanks for the heads-up.

 

[petewa]

For those of you running Raspberry Pi's
The new linux Kernal has a new Device Tree setup:
For info read:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=97314

To get temp probes to work with a new update you must put this text in config.txt.
first run

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

then place this in the file

dtoverlay=w1-gpio

I had to build a new card image and could not get any of my sensors to show up last night. This took some digging and hope it helps some others out...

Thanks... i ended up backing down the kernel (3.18.x) down to 3.12.x. I will also try your fix.

Thanks again

 

[DougEdey]

Attached a couple of recipes that've been run through Elsinore, there may be some subtle discrepancies on volumes (shouldn't be much though), let me know if anything major seems off.

View attachment robertsmildoutput.xml

View attachment barrelagedstoutoutput.xml

 

[FriendOfBrewers]

While I understand that every system will have differences (heating capacity, thermal loss, etc), I expect that most of our Duty, P, I, & D values fall within a range.

I'll be tuning my system tonight and I'd like to get an idea of what values others are using. My mash tun is an insulated keg. I'll be heating with a 240v 5500 watt element running at 1375 watts on 120v circuit in a RIMS tube. My system can raise the temperature of 5 gals of water 1 degree Fahrenheit in approximately 48 seconds.

I'm thinking of starting with these values: Duty=1, P=48, I=0, D=0.

What's your equipment, batch size, and values?

 

[FriendOfBrewers]

Here's some notes on my attempt to tune the PID.

With the pump at full speed, I got closest to my set temp, 153 F, with P=65, I=1, D=0.

It makes sense now that I think about it, but I was really surprised when I slowed the pump to see how much these same settings caused oscillation. The temperature would repeat a cycle of overshooting the set point by a couple degrees and then falling a couple of degrees below the set point. I could reduce this my changing P to something around 25. Ultimately this shouldn't matter, my 12v DC pump can move about 3gpm so I should be able to run it at full speed the entire mash.

 

[icepick_]

It appears that I may have somehow gotten permanently into 'edit' mode. There's no 'lock' button, there's always a 'choose file' button under the logo. Tried restarting. Updated to latest version. No dice.


Unrelated question:

Does the duty cycle do fractional seconds? IE, if I set it to 10 seconds, and 75%, does it do 7 second on, 7.5 second on, or 8 seconds on?

 

[Mikeliverpooluk]

Ice pick

Try chrome browser. I found that on my windows setup the lock button was missing when using Firefox and Internet explorer. Wasn't a problem on my iPad.
Downloaded chrome for windows job done . I now have chrome setup on my desktop renamed as "the brewery" and it's goes direct to Elsinore when started up. Still using Firefox for general internet browsing.

Happy brewing

Mike

 

[FriendOfBrewers]

For those of you running Raspberry Pi's
The new linux Kernal has a new Device Tree setup:
For info read:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=97314

To get temp probes to work with a new update you must put this text in config.txt.
first run

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

then place this in the file

dtoverlay=w1-gpio

I've updated my Raspberry Pi kernel and these instructions helped me get my sensors working again with w1-therm, but OWFS no longer works.

Any clues how to get OWFS working again?

 

[DougEdey]

Sorry for the lack of any response guys, my garage is uninsulated and it's currently -20C so the Wifi doesn't like it and I can't test any changes right now.

 

[Theodore18]

Sorry for the lack of any response guys, my garage is uninsulated and it's currently -20C so the Wifi doesn't like it and I can't test any changes right now.

I brewed for the first time on my new electric system yesterday in a somewhat insulated garage which was around -20, as well. My wifi connection was intermittent, so I connected a laptop to my BBB through USB. Part way through my boil, my laptop stopped working as it was too cold.

The panel was freezing and warming it with a hair dryer only helped somewhat. It struggled to get 12 gallons to a boil using a 5500W element. I'm hoping the BBB isn't damaged.

 

[DougEdey]

I brewed for the first time on my new electric system yesterday in a somewhat insulated garage which was around -20, as well. My wifi connection was intermittent, so I connected a laptop to my BBB through USB. Part way through my boil, my laptop stopped working as it was too cold.

The panel was freezing and warming it with a hair dryer only helped somewhat. It struggled to get 12 gallons to a boil using a 5500W element. I'm hoping the BBB isn't damaged.

Yeah, mine seems to be OK afterwards. Same thing happened last year.

I'm about to buy a house and move the brewery indoors, so I won't have the issue for much longer

 

[cank]

Doug,
Just had my first Elsinore Brew.
FANTASTIC!
Didn't get to use all the features but what I did use was a breeze.

Thanks so much for your hard work.

 

[FriendOfBrewers]

Does the duty cycle do fractional seconds? IE, if I set it to 10 seconds, and 75%, does it do 7 second on, 7.5 second on, or 8 seconds on?

I looked at Doug's code and see that it does support fractional seconds.

The duty cycle is calculated to thousandths of a second (millisecond). For your example above, the 10 second duty cycle is stored internally as 10,000. When there's a call for 75% power, the on time is calculated as 10000 * .75, or 7500 milliseconds.

 

[FriendOfBrewers]

Just had my first Elsinore Brew.

Would you mind sharing your P, I, and D values along with the volume and heating element you used?

 

[cliffhanger1821]

Would you mind sharing your P, I, and D values along with the volume and heating element you used?

I second this, I'm having problems fine tuning my system (single vessel ) because i don't really know where to start. Maybe in a separate thread though so we don't muddle up Doug's thread?

 

[cliffhanger1821]

Would you mind sharing your P, I, and D values along with the volume and heating element you used?

I second this, I'm having problems fine tuning my system (single vessel ) because i don't really know where to start. Maybe in a separate thread though so we don't muddle up Doug's thread?

 

[cliffhanger1821]

I second this, I'm having problems fine tuning my system (single vessel ) because i don't really know where to start. Maybe in a separate thread though so we don't muddle up Doug's thread?

 

[jangevaa]

PID settings are universal as long as you are speaking in the same units (e.g. Fahrenheit and seconds).

So, you can just as easily compare PID settings with individuals who use more common set ups on the forum; you are not restricted to comparing to other Strangebrew Elsinore users.

The graphing features in Strangebrew Elsinore are excellent for determining your PID settings (I think these still exist but I haven't used them since I originally set up my system).

Here's what I understand about setting up your PID settings in layman's terms.
The P will be equivalent to the amount of seconds it takes to increase the temperature by 1 degree (30-50 seconds typical if using Fahrenheit)
The D will be equivalent to the time delay in seconds from when your element turns off, to when the temperature stops increasing. On my system this is about 30 seconds.
The I will be an adjustment in temperature to account for a consistent over or undershoot using the above P and D settings. This can be positive or negative, and is probably within 1 degree, but more likely a fraction of a degree.

Here's a picture of that process.

 

[cank]

The P will be equivalent to the amount of seconds it takes to increase the temperature by 1 degree (30-50 seconds typical if using Fahrenheit)
The D will be equivalent to the time delay in seconds from when your element turns off, to when the temperature stops increasing. On my system this is about 30 seconds.
The I will be an adjustment in temperature to account for a consistent over or undershoot using the above P and D settings. This can be positive or negative, and is probably within 1 degree, but more likely a fraction of a degree.

Love this answer. Makes it clear. I got close with the settings:
P=60
I=2
D=0

I had 10.5 gal in my HLT(Euro 13gal Keggle) it was 20deg outside and I have a 5500 Watt Stainless element

I overshot a little and will use the info from Justin to fine tune some things next time.

 

[DougEdey]

PID settings <snip/>

Do you mind if I add this to the Documentation?

 

[jangevaa]

Do you mind if I add this to the Documentation?

You can if you'd like, though I'm not 100% sure this simplification is correct. Does it sound right to you? Having a hard time finding a reference for it. I must've seen it somewhere... I'll keep looking.

 

[muhteeus]

Just a heads up. The definitions listed are VERY non-standard for PID. It's usually 1 of two things. SP-PV = ERROR.

P - Gain of the proportional band (unitless).
I - Integral time, close to what he described. (1/s)
D - Derivative time, used to filter faster disturbances, usually not used for slow control. (s)

So you have calculations based of error. Output is increased proportionally (P*err), integrally (int(err) every 1/I seconds), and derivatively (derr/dt(err) from n-D to n)

the other scenario is less likely.

But hell, the devs could have designed it any way they want.

 

[DougEdey]

I implemented it with the standard function you defined, people are trying to make it easier to understand

 

[muhteeus]

I implemented it with the standard function you defined, people are trying to make it easier to understand

Ha! Didn't realize the dev is the OP.

Don't worry, im on my way out