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Clever, simple (I'm an EE - this is simple), and effective. Good idea.

An additional problem is that electrical engineering is kinda like the mechanical engineering of the 21st century. I have a BSEE - as does just about everyone else I work with - and we never touch circuits. We program supercomputers. The field is huge. That said, the kind of stuff you need...

Arduino programming is pretty easy. Plus, there is a pin-compatible upgrade for the current AVR chip used in the Arduino available now with twice the memory. I just started playing with one about 2 weeks ago, and I like the platform quite a bit. It's easy to develop for. This is a project...

Well, it clearly appears to not be a problem with current draw from the relay on the data pin. Curious. And puzzling. WBC's speculation about RF probably has some merit.

The Arduino notebook has another suggestion - to use a MOSFET transistor to drive the relay. Hook the relay to your power supply, then to the "D" pin on the transistor. Hook the "G" pin to your Arduino pin, and then hook the "S" pin to ground. You could drive something really big with that; I...

Maybe the relay requires too much current? You could try sticking an op-amp in there on the signal line headed to the relay. That could let you supply the current from your +5V power source rather than from the data pin. Hook it up like so:

I got my Arduino clone over the weekend. Very slick little system, and the little Java IDE makes it really easy to program and test. I wrote version 0.1 (heh) of my brewing controller in about 15 minutes last night. OK, calling it a brewing controller is a little glorified, since I'm doing...

I program supercomputers for a living, and (after spending about 2 minutes scanning it) it looks fine to me. There might be some areas where we can reduce program size, but I'm not real familiar with optimizing for the Arduino yet. (My dev board is on it's way, tho!) You've got lots of memory...

Good call. I'm looking at similar pin limitations in my proposed design. If you do work out an SD card setup, I wouldn't mind seeing how you accomplished it. Have you seen this LCD? Serial LCD Board

That's what I figured. Thanks. Yeah - I can't seem to envision a control scheme for the kettle that would work. I'm probably going to leave control manual, but allow the Arduino to keep me from doing something really stupid (like expose the electric element to air). As I mentioned, my plan...

Derrin, I just saw a few threads of yours on another forum (not a member there) about some of the problems you were having with the LM34 and noise. How did you eventually solve this? How far away are your sensors from your Arduino?

BTW, if somebody wants accurate Celsius readings, get an LM35 instead. Same principle, with the voltages calibrated to C instead of F. So that's what that is. I assumed it was a manual setting for your boil kettle; my thought was to read a potentiometer setting and turn around and put that...

I've been looking at using an Arduino for tons of automation tasks. I'm hoping to build a controller out of one for when I jump to all-grain, and another to control under-construction fermentation chambers and kegerator. Temperature probe readings with the LM34 is trivial - it reads 10mV per...

I've been doing a little research today, and if you use an Arduino microcontroller like Yuri Rage does, you can tack on an "Arduino Ethernet Shield" (which comes with a TCP/IP stack and example codes for a basic web server) and with some clever programming you could make your automated rig...

Where do you guys find switches beefy enough (and with enough poles) for the 240V heating elements? I can't seem to find switches rated at 25 amps. Do you use 4PST, or what? Also, it seems like a 50 amp service would be the "safe" level for an all-grain setup with 2 4500W electric heaters...

I'm also in Columbus, but I don't brew all-grain (yet). An acquaintance of mine pointed me at these guys the other day: Club Information-SODZ You should be able to find some help at one of their meets.

This raises an interesting tangential question - how do you determine what dry yeast substitutions are most appropriate? I'm definitely not experienced enough yet to be able to know how particular yeasts will impact a brew. To be able to look at a Wyeast pack or White Labs tube and say "if...

Yeah, "effort" was probably the wrong word. :) It just seems hard to find juice that is without preservatives or additives... at least around here. Last time I tried something similar (before I discovered this site) I had little luck.

I had originally wanted to use "Drunken Monkey Brewing Company", but (a) I couldn't come up with a good graphic, (b) there is a "Drunken Monkey" bar out there somewhere, and (c) there's a "Drunken Monkey" World of Warcraft guild. So, I was looking thru my collection of funny photos I've found...

I did this same thing nearly 2 years ago. Except instead of using a spare model train controller (I have one of those, actually), I used a power supply I had lying around from another project from Radio Shack that has a switchable voltage with about 5 presets. Got my rare earth magnets from RS...