Stc-1000+

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alphaomega said:
It sounds like a communication issue. Arduino IDE (or really AVRDude) can't "talk" properly to the device.
Click to expand...

Any idea why other simpler sketches wouldn't have any issue? I will definitely agree on the different port issue - both times it loaded (with the arv dude message) was through the left port on my laptop. I'll try a different usb cable this evening.
 
So I borrowed my roommate's PC to try and troubleshoot a bit - Blink still uploads fine, but no matter which USB port I use, i get:

avrdude: stk500_paged_write(): (a) protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x64
avrdude: stk500_cmd(): programmer is out of sync

Still no luck on my macbook ... next is to find another USB cable.
 
Just an FYI to any Canadians. I bought my first STC-1000 in January from Brainydeal by way of Amazon.ca (link) and it was the flashable, A400_P version. I just bought another from the same source and found out it is the 1.1 version that doesn't have the header solder points. The text on the board shows:

STC1000-Power_V1.1
2009.06.20
65*66.8*1.2

I noticed that my A400_P had a silvery label on it whereas this 1.1 version has a white label. I'm not sure if that is always the case.

Just a heads up to anyone who may be looking to buy from this source.

I am using this one to override the crappy built-in thermostat in my kegerator, so I wasn't planning on flashing it, but thought I would open it up anyway for poops and giggles.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
It would be cool if this idea could be applied to the mypin controller that reads my mash tun temps. Then I could program my mash steps.
 
I don't know if you've been following this thread, but I'm hoping to write a PID version for mashing for the STC-1000. I've made some progress, but I don't have a whole lot of time and this project has taken most of it.
 
Yeah but the stc1000 is a rectangle and the already installed pid controllers I have are square.
 
ogunshay said:
Has anyone else had issues in uploading picprog to their Arduino? Depending on my luck (haven't found reliable way to make it work), I either get 'Upload complete' or 'Problem uploading to board'. Does anyone know of a decent thread to troubleshoot the failures?

Either way, after uploading (or attempting), I get:

Binary sketch size: 30,584 bytes (of a 32,256 byte maximum)
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

Any having/had something similar?
Click to expand...

I think this means that the program is too big to upload. Even though then program appears to be smaller than the 32K memory available there is also the issue of the "boot loader" that is also present in the memory. Early version of the Arduino have a larger than needed boot-loader.

Some people say "Just upload the new boot-loader" - now this may just screw your Ardiuno so I took the other approach:

Reduce the size of the program by deleteing either the Fahrenheit or the Centigrade hex upload procedures. You only need to decide am I C or F?

That about halves the size of the code!

Also try a slower baud rate!
 
Anyone know for sure where the A400_P version can be purchased? I've got 3 of the regular ones and don't need any more of those for sure. Itching to do this project if I can only find the right hardware.
 
I have had good luck with Lerway on amazon, but no promises. There was a guy that posted here the other day who got the wrong version from them. To my knowledge, there isn't a guaranteed supplier of v1.0 we've found yet.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
I recently purchased 2 from lotfancy and they were very good about letting me return 1. I had opened 1 and cut the label so I kept it as i figured they couldn't sell it and that was my decision, but very good to deal with.
 
wilconrad said:
I have had good luck with Lerway on amazon, but no promises. There was a guy that posted here the other day who got the wrong version from them. To my knowledge, there isn't a guaranteed supplier of v1.0 we've found yet.
Click to expand...

It is really becoming more hit or miss.

adam01 said:
Can't you return the device(s) ? Or is it cost prohibitive ?
Click to expand...

It's hard to tell if you've gotten a flashable one without opening it up, requiring cutting the sticker all along the top, which really kinda makes it unreturnable depending on the supplier, your moral leanings, etc. :)
 
Will_D said:
Even though then program appears to be smaller than the 32K memory available there is also the issue of the "boot loader" that is also present in the memory. Early version of the Arduino have a larger than needed boot-loader.

[...]

Reduce the size of the program by deleteing either the Fahrenheit or the Centigrade hex upload procedures. You only need to decide am I C or F?
Click to expand...

So I the bootloader - v0.00, which is indeed out-of-date. Lacking a 10 k Ohm resistor (though I did think about using the temp probe of the STC at 25 C ;)), I went for the halving the code approach.

I made the following changes (first pass at cutting out F, being a Canadian):
hex_eeprom_fahrenheit[] PROGMEM = {
};
const char hex_fahrenheit[] PROGMEM = {
};​

Resulting in a sketch of 19 258 b. Uploads without any problems!

Now ... next step. Sending 'd' to the Arduino with the STC-1000 attached, I get back:
java.io.IOException: Device not configured in writeArray​
Followed by 48 lines of errors ....

Any idea if this would have been caused by chopping out the data to be contained by hex_eeprom_fahrenheit and hex_fahrenheit?
 
balrog said:
It is really becoming more hit or miss.







It's hard to tell if you've gotten a flashable one without opening it up, requiring cutting the sticker all along the top, which really kinda makes it unreturnable depending on the supplier, your moral leanings, etc. :)
Click to expand...


Maybe we should start contacting the vendors and explain what we're looking for.

Maybe we'd get lucky with one and they'd figure out how to get the 1.0's. I've tried with the manufacturers and didn't make any progress.
 
ogunshay said:
Now ... next step. Sending 'd' to the Arduino with the STC-1000 attached, I get back:
java.io.IOException: Device not configured in writeArray​
Followed by 48 lines of errors ....

Any idea if this would have been caused by chopping out the data to be contained by hex_eeprom_fahrenheit and hex_fahrenheit?
Click to expand...

After playing around in the monitor a bit more (changing baud rate to something else, getting gibberish, and back to 115200), the 'd' sent normally - uploading the Celsius sketch without any issue (despite the 48 lines of messages). Looks like I have a solution!

Now to finish the arduino-based temperature logger .....
 
ogunshay said:
[...]Now to finish the arduino-based temperature logger .....
Click to expand...

AVR based? Where you gonna stash the log file? Add an SPI serial flash chip?

fwiw, the 'Pi is great for that kind of thing. I have one running a full five sensors on One-Wire and another with two (soon to go to five) logging to sqlite and driving a web page. The same 'Pi's are both managing Unos running BrewPi (one has two instances running) and they don't seem too stressed about it. The "production" system down in the brewery has never crashed (meanwhile I routinely kill my dev system - thank goodness for backup images :) )

Cheers!
 
ogunshay said:
Now to finish the arduino-based temperature logger .....
Click to expand...

day_trippr said:
AVR based? Where you gonna stash the log file? Add an SPI serial flash chip?

fwiw, the 'Pi is great for that kind of thing. I have one running a full five sensors on One-Wire and another with two (soon to go to five) logging to sqlite and driving a web page. The same 'Pi's are both managing Unos running BrewPi (one has two instances running) and they don't seem too stressed about it. The "production" system down in the brewery has never crashed (meanwhile I routinely kill my dev system - thank goodness for backup images :) )

Cheers!
Click to expand...

I had an old laptop, and now that I had the Arduino to flash STC, I just followed FuzzeWuzze's BrewPi thread here and I'm using that to do data logging as I try to decide whether to use STC+ with ramping, or go true PID with BrewPi. For now, the simplicity of STC wins, but I loves me my data logging and website from BrewPi.
 
Bigdaddyale said:
I was able to peel off the label from one of my controllers by heating it up with a hair dryer.
Click to expand...

I did the same. Heat, a little time, and careful work with a sharp razor blade and it peeled up without damage, and thankfully turned out to be the desired version.
 
So if I wanted to use this for my HERMS system is it possible to set it to say 152.3 F or once you get into the three digits do you have to just pick a rounded number ie 152 or 153.
 
That is a really nice tip, with the heating and peeling. I'll try that next time.
Here's another one:
My new favourite way of clearing the solder pads from solder is heating with soldering iron and quickly jabbing a wooden tooth pick in the hole. I find it best to melt from bottom and run the tooth pick in from the top.
 
As an FYI I just flashed 2 units with an Arduino Mega 2560. I will post a comparison of a submersible temp logger versus the temp profile I have planned when the beer I brew this weekend is done.
 
poptarts said:
So if I wanted to use this for my HERMS system is it possible to set it to say 152.3 F or once you get into the three digits do you have to just pick a rounded number ie 152 or 153.
Click to expand...

Once in triple digits, decimal is dropped. So yes, pick a rounded number.

Now, I've had a glass of wine *gasp* and feel like ranting...

0.1 deg accuracy is an illusion anyway (even more so for NTC's at high or low temps), and in hindsight I should perhaps not have had the decimal at all.
The stock firmware has it, so I guess people would be upset if my firmware was 'worse'. Resolution is good enough, but 0.1 accuracy is just not going to happen.
Instrumentation to accurately measure temperature to within 0.1 degree will cost money and would probably need frequent calibration. So it is a lie.
Non-engineers will confuse resolution with accuracy. You can improve accuracy by calibrating around your working point with as good a reference thermometer as you can get, but still best you could hope for is probably around 1-2F.
 
Accuracy is not better in C, it is a limitation of the hardware. You will be enjoying a little more resolution for presentation though at higher temps.
 
correct, the current stc-1000 as is only lets you tighten the swing to .3 where this will go to .1 thats basically all im looking for for my herms, all the other features will be nice for my fermentation chamber though.
 
alphaomega said:
Once in triple digits, decimal is dropped. So yes, pick a rounded number.

Now, I've had a glass of wine *gasp* and feel like ranting...

0.1 deg accuracy is an illusion anyway (even more so for NTC's at high or low temps), and in hindsight I should perhaps not have had the decimal at all.
The stock firmware has it, so I guess people would be upset if my firmware was 'worse'. Resolution is good enough, but 0.1 accuracy is just not going to happen.
Instrumentation to accurately measure temperature to within 0.1 degree will cost money and would probably need frequent calibration. So it is a lie.
Non-engineers will confuse resolution with accuracy. You can improve accuracy by calibrating around your working point with as good a reference thermometer as you can get, but still best you could hope for is probably around 1-2F.
Click to expand...

I agree, and perhaps i should alter my BrewPi post related to it being .1F accurate because its not, its technically only +-.5C accurate(as opposed to the STC which is +-1C) although it is highly precise so if you calibrate it properly it should not deviate much over time, at least at the scales we care about.

I do still feel you should try to be as accurate (and precise) as possible for Fermentation. And you should calibrate your BrewPi and STC against the best thermometer you can(like a Thermapen). In reality most of these probes will be deviated off to one side, and not really shift over time. If it comes from the factory -1C off true value due to manufacturing it should always be near -1C off, obviously they will shift like I mentioned above but things like the DS18B20 are used in many industrial implementations and i cant imagine they would be using them if they were having to replace them constantly from deviating over time.
 
I ordered from Lerway via Amazon on Monday (6/30/2014) and received a Version 1.0. It's just one data point, but I did get the desired STC.
 
Flashed 2 of my 3 today, one in C for my HERMS system and one in F for my chamber. This stuff is nice. Thank you for all the work you did on this project.
 
@poptarts: Maybe I misunderstood you a bit. You can still have 0.1 hysteresis even though the setpoint is in the triple digits, it's just the setpoint will have to be an integer. So if you set it at 152, it will still switch on heating at 151.9 (and cooling at 152.1).

@fuzzewuzze: Of course you should aim for accuracy and calibrate as best you can. My point is that 0.1 resolution is misleading, even though it can be useful. Also don't attribute to much to the specified accuracy. You will probably have pretty decent accuracy (when calibrated), close to your point of calibration. But at higher/lower temps accuracy will be worse. I don't know for sure, but I can't imagine that the DS18B20 uses anything other than a thermistor to measure temperature. Sure, it could have been manufactured with better equipment, but honestly I think actual accuracy will be comparable to the NTC and AD of the STC-1000.
 
I ordered an STC1000 back in Jan 2013 from these guys, and it's a 1.0
I just received another one from the same (Lerway) yesterday, and its also a 1.0

could be just lucky.

waiting for my arduino to show up now, and I'm gonna give this a shot.

wilconrad said:
I have had good luck with Lerway on amazon, but no promises. There was a guy that posted here the other day who got the wrong version from them. To my knowledge, there isn't a guaranteed supplier of v1.0 we've found yet.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
Click to expand...
 
crajax said:
I ordered an STC1000 back in Jan 2013 from these guys, and it's a 1.0
I just received another one from the same (Lerway) yesterday, and its also a 1.0

could be just lucky.

waiting for my arduino to show up now, and I'm gonna give this a shot.
Click to expand...


I've gotten 1.1s from Lerway. I wonder if their supplier changes or what...
 
alphaomega said:
That is a really nice tip, with the heating and peeling. I'll try that next time.
Here's another one:
My new favourite way of clearing the solder pads from solder is heating with soldering iron and quickly jabbing a wooden tooth pick in the hole. I find it best to melt from bottom and run the tooth pick in from the top.
Click to expand...

I heat them up and blow through them from the opposite side - works every time - just dont do it on the carpet... Hot solder flying alert. I did them in the garage on the concrete floor.
 
Hey all,

I've been reading through this thead, just bought an STC-1000 through Amazon.ca, seller Brainydeal, happened to be the right version of controller! Can't wait to get one of these babys up and running. Thanks to everyone who's been working on it, especially Alpha!
 
Currently trying to flash my stc-1000. I decided I'd try by holding wires on to the pins. The first time I tried to flash it, it seemed to start the process.... I had to send "d". when I did that, nothing seemed to happen (guessing my hand moved). Now when I try to do it again, when uploading to the uno, i get an error: avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x30

Does that me I'm not making a good enough connection with my pins? I'm pretty sure I have the wires in the right order.

Cheers,

Dan
 

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