Auber SLY 2352 Never finishes calibration- boils forever!

My Auber SLY-2352 never finishes calibration.... anyone got any ideas?

It's been doing this for MONTHS. It used to DRAMATICALLY overshoot my temps (I switch the power out from my SSR between the boil kettle and HLT with a 3 way switch and manually turn it to off sometime- I now know that this confuses the hell out of the Auber PID's "Fuzzy learning algorithms" so I've been hoping that a recalibration will make it perform like it did when it was new.

When I tried this 3 months ago the calibration never finished it just boiled for over an hour and never stopped calibration. -I thought it was because it read 208F at boiling and I didn't reset the pB value so that boiling == 212F (thinking that the calibration procedure required it to hit boiling).

I've since changed my probe and it hits 212F perfectly at boiling but AGAIN the calibration procedure SEEMED to work correctly except I'm now at 56 minutes of calibration (supposed to take 10-20 minutes) and the damn thing is still running- it's been @ 212F FOREVER...

Just to make sure I scrolled through the configuration settings and At is set to "2" so it's still in calibration mode...


I'll give it 10 more minutes and if nothing changes I'm going to have to turn the pid off and back on and then manually reset at=3 if it doesn't stop on its own.


Adam

If I remember correctly for the auto tune it should hit your desired temperature and then cycle 3 times(power on, power off).

Set your temp to 200 then start the calibration.

Going to throw out a theory here. Someone chime in if I'm way off base.

If I'm not mistaken, you shouldn't perform an auto tune at boiling. If you think about how this feature should work, it applies some heat, looks to see how the heat applied impacted the temp, then makes adjustments depending on if it overshot or undershot the set point. If it can never overshoot it will never finish auto tune. And at boiling temps it will never be able to overshoot because 212F is as hot as you'll get.

Does that hold water?

TexasWine said:

Going to throw out a theory here. Someone chime in if I'm way off base.

If I'm not mistaken, you shouldn't perform an auto tune at boiling. If you think about how this feature should work, it applies some heat, looks to see how the heat applied impacted the temp, then makes adjustments depending on if it overshot or undershot the set point. If it can never overshoot it will never finish auto tune. And at boiling temps it will never be able to overshoot because 212F is as hot as you'll get.

Does that hold water?

Click to expand...

This makes perfect sense. I think I tuned mine at 152

Try this procedure...
http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/control-panel-setup

I think something got lost in translation...

I'm not calibration at boiling temps. I followed Kal's instructions. Instead of calibrating at my mash temp, I calibrate at my strike temp -I think 161F, though.


The plot also thickens as I realized something else:

When I put my PID into Automatic mode and set the temp to say 160F, if I just press the A/M mode and set manual mode to 100% then flip it back to Automatic Mode @ 160F -the controller continues to act like it's still in Manual mode at 100% -and it just goes crazy and overshoots the temp. If I then flip back to automatic mode and set to to 50% and flip back to 160F -it acts like it's set at 50% (I have a LED hooked up to the output of the SSR and continuing on to the element and I can see it blinking at what looks like a 50% rate) -again if I set it to manual mode and set manual mode to 1% then switch back to Automatic mode I will only get a very fast flicker of the light on every once in a while.

My PID controller seems to be just ignoring my Automatic mode setting and just using the manual mode setting even when I'm in Automatic mode. --This also coorelates closely with my Auto Learning (AT) experience -Auto Learning is acting like it's just using the Manual mode setting of 90% heat output which would explain why it just boils forever, huh?


-It's kind of acting like my SSR has failed on except that when I change Manual mode down to say 50% or 1% then the heat input actually drops to 50% or 1% -that wouldn't happen if the SSR was busted...


So, so weird.


Adam

I contacted auber support via email we'll see what they say, but I think the crux of the matter is that the PID is pretty much permanently operating in Manual mode regardless of whether I select Manual Mode or Automatic mode on the screen...



Adam

KennyM said:

Try this procedure...
http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/control-panel-setup

Click to expand...

That's exactly the procedure I've always used and used this time as well...


Adam

Well, I finally figured it out: It was stupid user error aided by an odd level of unintuitive design...

-When I would "bump" the set button (A-M setting ="0") and it would permanently display a temperature rather than a % output, I was assuming that this was switching the controller to Automatic mode. (Why would it display a temperature in Manual mode?) -Then it let me Auto Tune while still in Manual mode -Again, WHY? Auto Tune doesn't mean or do anything in Manual Mode...


Anyway I figured out that I actually need to hold the A/M button for 3 seconds to get it to switch to Automatic mode and that the A-M light needs to turn off and that's my indicator that it's in Automatic Mode.

-That light's naming is also incredibly unintuitive and misleading it should just be called "Automatic Mode" and when it's lit up, it's in Automatic Mode and when it's not, it's in Manual mode.


Adam
Thanks for everyone who tried to help me out!

I feel your pain bt. I only brew once or twice a month and every time I brew I need to think very deliberately about which buttons i push in which order on my BK PID (Kal Clone).

I use the BK PID in auto mode to heat up my strike water before I pump it to the MT, then I switch to manual mode for the boil. Confusing and non-intuitive to be sure but at least when its in the right mode it works great...

joebob296 said:

This makes perfect sense. I think I tuned mine at 152

Click to expand...

I second that! I use a 120 volt 2000 watt element and an Auber SYL-2362 PID controller with a Brewhardware RIMS tube. Since my mash water typically runs about 2.6F cooler than my PID settings, I tune mine for 154.6F with a 1 gal/min flow-rate (for a 152F mash) and/or 170.6F with a .25 gal/min flow-rate (for a 168F mashout).

Note: I typically do my "auto-tunes" on the fly and have my controller "atdu" (overshoot control) setting at zero (0).