BCS462 fermentation control

[part16john]

I have a 50A panel from ebrewsupply that has a BCS462 installed inside. I have 4 temp probes for fermentation open on the panel and I have two freezers that I would like to control. Can anyone share how they control fermentation freezers through your panel/BCS462 allowing cooling and heating. I tried searching the ecc forum, wiki and this forum and also Google and have some ideas but wanted to see what others are doing. I appreciate the help!

 

[JonW]

Looks like there are two similar threads here on the same thing. Maybe join in on the other thread here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=523964

 

[part16john]

I'm not using glycol, pumps or valves. Just freezers and desk space heaters to control temps inside the freezer. Just looking for a way to control the freezers/heaters through the bcs.

 

[JonW]

Are you controlling any of your brew day stuff with the BCS? Doing setpoints for heating and cooling of fermentation isn't much different than doing it for your brew day.

Associate a temp probe with an output and put your setpoint in for the heat or cool. Do both (heat & cool) in the same state if you want as long as you don't overlap their setpoints.

 

[part16john]

Thanks for the in for Jon! Based on what I read I need a way to connect the freezers/heaters to the control panel to switch on and off through relays. It sounds like folks have done this using the network port and cat5 cable but haven't seen any schematics or parts used to do this. Thanks again for your help!

 

[part16john]

Finally got this set up using cat 5 cable and powertails to control freezers and space heaters. Seems to work great in my tests. Looking forward to fermenting my first brew. It was very simple using the existing data port on my panel and cat 5 cable running to the Bcs inside the panel and then externally cat 5 to powertails. I have 4 states...safety(5 min), hold temp, cool and heat. I would like to figure out a way to be able to key in a specific ferm schedule(ferm at x degrees for 7 days and then ramp up for rest) so I don't have to manually change it...Any ideas?

 

[JonW]

I would like to figure out a way to be able to key in a specific ferm schedule(ferm at x degrees for 7 days and then ramp up for rest) so I don't have to manually change it...Any ideas?

There's a ramp feature in the BCS that allows you to ramp a temp up/down over a period of time, but it sounds like maybe you want to actually jump the setpoints at specific times rather than ramping.

The only way off hand I can think of to do this would be to set a cron job (task scheduler) on your computer that would do a post via the API to change the setpoints. CURL would be a program that could do that.

See the API docs here: http://www.embeddedcc.com/api-docs/

You're looking to change the setpoint at a specific process & state. To see what the setpoints are at that process/state, enter this URL: http://192.168.1.103/api/process/6/state/1/output_controllers .

The data returned is what you would want to post back as the URL body (except modify the setpoint you want). You can omit setpoints that you don't want to modify.

e.g. use this body for only changing temp probe 8:
[{},{},{},{},{},{},{},{"mode":3,"heat":true,"input":7,"swing":20,"setpoint":1400}]