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I sort of get what you're saying about wanting to make the beer rather than having a machine do it for you. That's why the Brewie and PicoBrew don't appeal to me that much. But I very much intend to make the wort that I brew--I'll design the recipe, I'll crush the grains and measure the water...

Obviously I can't speak for anyone else, but I can give you some sense of how I arrived at a 2-vessel 50A system. I had originally planned on doing eBIAB, and upgrading to more vessels later if I was unsatisfied with eBIAB for some reason. But then I found BruControl and started reading about...

Arg. Too bad he's out of stock. As far as 10/3 or 10/4 I'm not sure what you mean about being concerned about grounding it--there's a ground wire in 10/3 and 10/4, the difference between them is that you also have a neutral wire in 10/4 so you could run 120v stuff in your panel as well. The...

I was going to run only 12v--all of my valves are 12v and I figured I could run any 5v stuff off of the MEGA, but I did not want to overload the MEGA's power circuits, so I bought a small 5v psu. Then I got a 24v voltage transducer, so I got a cheap boost DC transformer to run that from the 12v...

FYI, if you're looking to do 240v on the cheap(er), I got one of the 5500w elements (and a cable) described in this thread for $49 shipped from China. Of course, your point still stands as to all of the other stuff you'd have to do/buy to get started with 240v. I was always planning to jump in...

I bought this wire from ebay and it seems to be pretty decent quality (warning, I am not an electrician, so my opinion as to the quality of wire may not be valid) and not too expensive. I actually have a good amount left over--too bad you're not local, I could sell it to you relatively cheap.

Curious to know this as well. I think I'm going to give this a try for fermenting in a keg using this Cool Zone jacket.

RIMS element and pump water tested! Now waiting on remaining valves and fittings to arrive from China. After that, I need to figure out how to attach the plumbing skirt to my shelf, and then it's a lot of valve/sensor wiring. Lots more work to do, but I'm slowly getting closer...

Not who you asked, but I have that proportional valve and it works when wired it up for testing as BrunDog suggested (red and black to 12v and ground, and green to PWM converter output).

I'm sure everyone has been waiting with bated breath to know the outcome of my troubleshooting, so here it is. It was the MEGA. Maybe it was the USB chip, or maybe it was from being knocked around during bench testing or in my toolbox waiting for the build. In any case, I procured a $15 MEGA...

Thanks day_trippr. Powering via 12V in through the VIN pin, so that shouldn't be the problem.

Check out BrunDog's 2-vessel build thread in his signature. It's what I'm modeling mine on. He even has a couple of videos in there showing how his brew day goes. -Adam

Thanks swimIan. I also have that panel mount cable; I can give that brand of cable a try as well.

@Die_Beerery, any specific brand of cable that you used? Did they have ferrite chokes or anything fancy like that? What about your MEGAs: do they both use the standard arduino usb driver or the "generic" usb driver? Thanks for any input you can provide. -Adam P.S. Off-topic to this thread...

EDIT— sorry that message got posted twice. I haven’t yet tried the second cable with anything other than the MEGA, and I already sent the first one back. I’ll do a quick check to make sure the cable seems otherwise fine. Another piece of info—I got one of the MEGAs with the generic usb chip...

@BrunDog, et al— has anyone had luck with a long-ish usb cable? I’ve bought two 10 footers from amazon and they’ve both failed to communicate with the MEGA, while the short cable that shipped with the MEGA works fine.

Heh. Yes, still very much in testing. Some things have real names, others, well...

Even closer...

@TexasWine- I have that valve and it is wired just as BrunDog describes

Shamelessly ripped off from you, @BrunDog (as is much of the rest of the design). Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?