temp logging/monitoring

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Mellman

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Hello all,

I'm looking to purchase something to help me monitor/log my temps for brewing to assist in getting more consistent brews. I don't have a ferm chamber yet, but my basement stays at a fairly consistent 60-65 *F depending on how i tweak the thermostat. That said, i'd like to begin logging my temps in my kegerator(s), my conicals, and a yeast/hop freezer i have.

Now to the root of my question - does the BCS or brewtroller allow me to integrate with email/snmp/some sort of trigger and send alerts if a temp is outside of a specified range?

Thanks!
 
If you have a spare computer, even a low end machine, then a 1-wire device and a temp sensor to go with it will not only collect data, but feed it to a file or upload to a server for you.

You can add as many sensors as you need to the wire and each one will feed back into the "chart". This way you can record ambient temp and wort temp separately and see how the wort changes temperature over the course of fermentation.

The cost of a 1-wire USB adapter is like $30 I think and temp sensors are like $2 each IIRC.

People use them to monitor temps all over their houses and then some. They can use regular telephone wire or CAT5 or whatever and don't need external power source up to a certain length.
 
Homercidal said:
If you have a spare computer, even a low end machine, then a 1-wire device and a temp sensor to go with it will not only collect data, but feed it to a file or upload to a server for you.

You can add as many sensors as you need to the wire and each one will feed back into the "chart". This way you can record ambient temp and wort temp separately and see how the wort changes temperature over the course of fermentation.

The cost of a 1-wire USB adapter is like $30 I think and temp sensors are like $2 each IIRC.

People use them to monitor temps all over their houses and then some. They can use regular telephone wire or CAT5 or whatever and don't need external power source up to a certain length.
Click to expand...

I like this idea.

I was thinking about one of these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Digitale-Te...del_Bambino&hash=item415334b27e#ht_4228wt_954
 
I've got a one-wire system going. Not actively monitoring temps, but it is setup to do that.
I've got a couple one-wire temp sensors hooked up to an Arduino. The Arduino translates the serial stream from the sensors into actual temps (super easy with a bit of reading and copy/paste of code).
From there, I've gotten it working so that it will write out to a microSD card with a little board that connects to the Arduino. Obviously this is really only useful for analyzing after the fact.
My next idea is a one-wire temp sensor connected to a Xbee-ready Arduino, then have one Xbee on that which transmits the temp data to another Xbee which is hooked up to my computer. You can write a simple Processing script that will read and graph (or whatever) the sent temps.
Clearly this isn't a cheap solution, but my plan is to allow for it to be easily modifiable and expandable or tear it down and use the bits for other projects.
The only thing I don't currently have to do the wireless thing is the Xbee-ready Arduino.
 
Zaphod said:
I've got a one-wire system going. Not actively monitoring temps, but it is setup to do that.
I've got a couple one-wire temp sensors hooked up to an Arduino. The Arduino translates the serial stream from the sensors into actual temps (super easy with a bit of reading and copy/paste of code).
From there, I've gotten it working so that it will write out to a microSD card with a little board that connects to the Arduino. Obviously this is really only useful for analyzing after the fact.
My next idea is a one-wire temp sensor connected to a Xbee-ready Arduino, then have one Xbee on that which transmits the temp data to another Xbee which is hooked up to my computer. You can write a simple Processing script that will read and graph (or whatever) the sent temps.
Clearly this isn't a cheap solution, but my plan is to allow for it to be easily modifiable and expandable or tear it down and use the bits for other projects.
The only thing I don't currently have to do the wireless thing is the Xbee-ready Arduino.
Click to expand...

this sounds like exactly what I want. Unfortunately my understanding/familiarity with arduino is basically nil. I have C/C#/Java/VB/Powershell programming/scripting knowledge, but interfacing with hardware .... i'm lost, mostly because i've just never tried it.

guess i've got some reading to do...
 
That's the nice thing about Arduino, if it can be done, someone has done it (or done close).

Check out Processing. It's specifically designed to software interface with Arduinos (or Xbees, though I haven't done it yet) and looks like Arduino code. And it makes it super easy to export a little java applet so you can have a wee executable running to do the monitoring.
 
I had my 1-wire system running on my desktop, monitoring temps in my kegerator and logging to my website via FTP.

All of that was out of the box stuff with some basic config. No programming or anything.

1-Wire USB adapter
Temps Sensor
LogTemp logging software

Every so often it would record what the sensor was reading and update a log file. The software also created a .jpg file on the webserver. So I could view the temps on a chart from any Internet enabled machine.

I also tried setting it up on LInux, and was just getting somewhere with it when the HDD failed and I don't have a spare 2.5" drive handy. But Linux was much more work compared to how very simple the Windows software worked.

I really should load up an old desktop machine and set up a system with 4 sensors this time. 1 for ambient temps, 1 for beer temp, 1 for compressor cycles, and 1 for heater cycles.
 
I'm monitoring with Pachube here: https://pachube.com/feeds/45035

It's using 3, 1-Wire sensors, some Cat5 cable, Arduino, USB cable and an old laptop. It could be made for $40-50 if you had a computer that will connect to the internet.

I'm still working some bugs out. The timezone is set wrong. The chamber sensor is warmer than the chamber temp near the beer.

I posted the Arduino and Processing code here: http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,89332.0.html

I'm using a ranco to control the temps, but have plans to move the control to arduino and a powerswitch tail.

I take the sensors offline when I'm not fermenting, so you may not see any activity on the Pachube site by the time you read this, so here is a screenshot.

untitled.jpg
 
www.weatherdirect.com for like $50 you can get a gateway and wireless sensor that can be hooked up to a probe. Every 5 minutes or so it refreshes to the internet and you can download it to excel and quickly chart out the progression. I've been using one for 2 years to monitor my wine room temps and love it.
 
Hang Glider said:
Bikes n beers

looks like you've got some warm ferments going on....
just sayin'
Click to expand...

Ha! Thats the risk in showing off your temps...

The fermentation is slowing down, so I'm starting to ramp up the temps. I'm targeting 70 degrees right now. The chamber temp is taken from higher up in the chamber/closet than the beer is. Plus I think the DS runs a little high. The chamber temp is more of an FYI about how much the heater is running. Check out the beer temp. That's the important one.
 
Frogger42 said:
www.weatherdirect.com for like $50 you can get a gateway and wireless sensor that can be hooked up to a probe. Every 5 minutes or so it refreshes to the internet and you can download it to excel and quickly chart out the progression. I've been using one for 2 years to monitor my wine room temps and love it.
Click to expand...

+1

I use these in my ferm chambers (link in sig) and they work great.
 

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