Test Drive a BCS-460 Temperature Controller

[eccsynd]

I've gotten quite a few requests to make a BCS-460 available online for people to demo. Since its a networked device, it is relatively straightforward to make it accessible online. If your not familiar with the BCS-460 temp controller, there are a few links below.

Setup: The BCS-460 is connected to 4 temperature probes, all partially submerged in the same glass of water. The probes are right out of the box, not calibrated. Outputs are looped back, wired to the inputs. So when Out1 is asserted, the Din1 will also turn on. The password below is an "Observer" password, so you won't be able to program or turn anything on/off. Feel free to ask any questions.

Internet Explorer not supported, please use a browser that is w3 compliant and not bloated/slow, like Firefox, Chrome, or Safari.

http://ecc.webhop.org:8081/
Userid: admin
passwd: bcsdemo

Brief description of the processes currently programmed into the demo BCS:

• Process0: Timer Demo - Simple process meant to demonstrate state transitions. It rotates through 3 outputs, asserting each for 20 seconds based on a timer.
• Process1: Mash Process - Temperature step mash process, typical brew day with delayed start, protein rest, saccharification rest, and mash out.
• Process2: Fly Sparge - Process to control a pump with float switch for a fly sparge. Similar to Example System 3 - ECCWiki
• Process3: Ferm Ramp - This process demonstrates Ramp Mode. Ramps the temperature setpoint from 60* to 80* in 30sec, holds, and then ramps down. Obviously not used for a real fermentation, but meant to show temperature ramping capabilities.

Process0 and Process3 are running, the others are stopped.

The BCS-460 wasn't designed to serve a huge number of users simultaneously, so if you see lags please turn down the refresh rate. I plan on keeping the demo up today. If I take it off, I'll update this original post.

For more information, visit the website. There is a wiki that takes you through the BCS-460 page by page. Other threads on the BCS-460:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/bcs-460-embedded-control-concepts-99410/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/bcs-460-beta-test-87456/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/temperature-control-system-beta-testers-needed-82734/

Cheers!

 

[caskconditioned]

Sweet, Thanks!

 

[np0x]

As one of the beta testers, i have had a long time to get used to the bcs and develop some thoughts and see others work through the integration of their bcs into their brewery(in my local brew club somehow we already have 3, i think that makes us the largest community.

Anyway, it is a very cool device and here is why I think so, and this list is in no particular order, my favorites are #9 (good thermometers, and #5-the enabler). Read on and let me know what you think.

1. It's web based, so if you have the where withal you can access it anywhere with a little bit of network know how, so I regularly monitor my brew session, while running up to the grocery store or start my brew session from work so it can heat up before I get home. Now I will admit that I am a web guy, I use google docs so my data is everywhere, and I think the coupling of the brewery with remote access is very interesting, especially when coupled with long running fermentation schedules.

2. It is LOW power, the unit takes less than 1 watt of power at all times, compare this with a dedicated computer, and the numbers are 200x that easily. I hate phantom or intentional power draws, and I am constantly turning off lights, at 1 watt, it, will cost 1 kilowatt hour in 41 days(that's about 5 cents a month in northern virginia if my math is correct, compared to $10-15/month for a 200-300 watt computer).

3. It is flexible, this is initially a challenge to overcome, but the system is designed to be flexible, it has no preconceptions about how you brew with regards to HERMS, RIMS, mash schedules, it's all flexible and can be built to support any brew approach desired. It can be used with an electric brewery, or a gas fired brewery, it's all abstracted via the low voltage outputs that can be used to switch SSR's or anything else that can be switched with a low voltage circuit(or high with the use of ssr's). If you have an idea the design of the system should support it. You have temperature probes, low voltage switchable circuits, web buttons, and physical buttons all as options.

4. It's a time saver, at this point, I get the system all loaded up with water and start the program, I do other things until it hits strike temp, then add the grain, and can walk away again and come back when the temp of the mash has been raised to mash out, it just switches gears at the end of the 60 minutes. This allows me to do other things, like bottle 10 gallons of beer and transfer 15 other gallons to secondaries all while brewing a high gravity wee heavy this weekend. Generally, it's better if I clean instead of going crazy moving 280 lbs of beer in a single day, but I think that goes without saying.

5. It is an enabler, it allows individuals to take the brewery into a heavily automated state and put significant instrumentation into the system with a minimum of effort. The bcs supports up to 4 temperature probes and can control 6 independent circuits, with as much power as you could reasonable want to run through readily available Solid State Relays(SSR's). Prior to working with the bcs, i had simply been using a ranco giving me only one temperature probe, i wasn't controlling fermentation temperature as carefully and everything was differentially controlled. The bcs temperature programs can be either differential OR PID based temperature targeting. I wasn't even really capable of even dealing with PID's prior to getting started with this. The bcs is setup so you can also tune the pid parameters or the thermoresistors parameters.

6. Reproducibility, from the point of adding the grain to the strike water and kicking off the brewing session, there is no need for user input, as I described before, the next action i have after doughing in, is to start sparging.

7. Instrumentation/Data Logging - Any combination of outputs and temperature probes can be graphed over varying times, so I can monitor (and visualize) the temperature changes, audit the ability of my brewery's ability to affect temperature changes in brewery tests determining how much change in temperature I can gain with the current configuration of how water heater elements in my herms.

8. Long term temperature/fermentation control - The bcs can be used to control either short term brew sessions, or multiday temperature ramps, this has been fun in some of the belgian brews where the temperature is raised towards the end of the ferment to dry it out.

9. Thermoresistors rock, i have gone through so many thermometers, and easily experienced a range of 15 degrees between the extremes. I found this really annoying, the first thing I did when i got the bcs was hook up all the temperature probes into a water bath and found that they ALL read within 0.2-0.4 degrees of each other. This may be one of my last reasons, but it's an awesome fact, i hate bad thermometers, talk about frustrating, brewing is hard enough without good information. Thermistors are sensitive, cheap, and accurate, and continuing the flexibilty thread, the bcs is setup so you can use any type N 10K ohm resistor.

10. It's just fun. I have gotten to play with electricity, program different processes for the brew session, monitor my fermentation temperatures over days.

I am sure there are other reason's it's cool, but that's my current list that I remember.

p.s. I am cross posting this on the other boards that adam has the demo threads on, so if it looks familiar on another board, well, it is.

 

[p4ck37p1mp]

+1 I love mine so far and I'm only using 10% of what it is capable of doing and slowly adding more automation.

 

[eccsynd]

So, what do you think? There's been quite a few people that logged onto the demo. Opinions?

 

[bakins]

Nice. If you had released this a year ago... I've got that much money in PID's now... I really like the flexibility. I had looked into building an arduino based system similar to this, but it's far better that I had thought about doing.

 

[caskconditioned]

So, what do you think? There's been quite a few people that logged onto the demo. Opinions?

As you already know, I'm sold. Scrapping together the funds to buy + go all electric but I will implement the BCS-460 some time this Spring/Summer (and sell my PID and other equipment it will replace).

I love how flexible it is. Being able to monitor via a web browser etc. Plus the price point is affordable given what you get. I don't even own one yet and I'm super impressed.

I do have some suggestions for the UI but being in the software biz myself, I know it's impossible to appeal to everyone. For example, I love the digital temp readouts but find no use for the thermometer dial above it. Would be cool to have a small chart in it's place showing the last 15 min temps (configurable etc). But again, this is all just stuff that falls in the "preferences" category and can easily be ignored.

 

[slimer]

I do have some suggestions for the UI but being in the software biz myself, I know it's impossible to appeal to everyone. For example, I love the digital temp readouts but find no use for the thermometer dial above it. Would be cool to have a small chart in it's place showing the last 15 min temps (configurable etc). But again, this is all just stuff that falls in the "preferences" category and can easily be ignored.

Send them to Adam. He is very diligent about taking feedback and applying it.

 

[eccsynd]

I love the digital temp readouts but find no use for the thermometer dial above it. Would be cool to have a small chart in it's place showing the last 15 min temps (configurable etc).

I've had comments from other users along similar lines. In my mind, the gauges are a 'must have' feature, just because they give the interface a nice look, especially when showing to people for the first time... But after that wears off, the gauges aren't that useful. They're implemented as java applets, so they're not exactly fast either.

What I plan to do for a future firmware release is to give people the option of disabling the gauges, or maybe just make them smaller. They take up a significant amount of real estate, especially on lower resolutions, like some of the 800x600 touchscreens that people are using with the 460. Personally, I like them because they give you an 'across the room' quick glance of the temps, but can see why it may be desirable to minimize them.

Giving users the option to replace them with a small chart is a neat idea.

 

[eccsynd]

Originally I had planned to keep the demo up for a day or two. Honestly, I wasn't sure how it would perform with many many users accessing it at the same time. I've posted this link on a few other boards too.

I've periodically checked on the demo controller since posting the link. There were a handful of times where I experienced some lag, where the timers wouldn't update every second. But 98% of the time it performed flawlessly. Even with that many users, it won't go down, just drop a few observation packets. I think this is a good way for people to get a feel for the controller, so I plan to keep the demo up for a while.

The only way that I have to monitor the traffic is through the packet counters on the Ethernet Settings page of the 460. The counter only goes up to 64k before it rolls over, and I've seen it roll over many times (~20).. A typical access could be ~40 packets, so its seen some major traffic! Thanks for looking!