Crane's Never ending Brewery Upgrades

[crane]

I have been planning out a new control panel build that will hopefully be future proof enough to last me a long time. Once I started accumulating parts for the build, I went ape **** on ebay. I got some really good deals on about half of these transmitters. 3 PH, 5 DO, and 1 conductivity.

And to go along with that we need sensors. Again, I got some good deals on ebay, like these conductivity sensors.

I picked up some PH sensors that were new in their boxes for a fraction of their retail cost. I also found 3 matching PH probe holders that I will convert from 25mm threaded to tri clamp.

 

[crane]

And to round things out I got another steal of a deal on these DO probes. The majority of the cost for these probes is the $100 per probe rebuild kit. And these will also be converted from 25mm to tri clamp.

 

[mkosonen]

Nice eBay finds! I thought I was the only one who has a problem with collecting future parts on eBay. But yeah, the InPro rebuild kits are dang expensive, my pricelist has them for $516 for a 4 pack of T-96... Ugh. Anyway, I love your build, keep up the good work. You saved me time and Arduino inputs by pointing out the over voltage when a SM6004 goes over its high threshold. If you've ever thought about having welded tri-clamps on the SM6004, let me know. You can find pictures on my instagram @benchmadebeer if you're curious. Cheers!

 

[crane]

Thanks for the compliments. Glad my testing of those SM6004s has helped others. I checked out your Instagram. I never heard of an orbital welder before. Look pretty interesting for tubing butt welds.

 

[crane]

While we are on the topic of over volting analog inputs, I had an incident where one of my pressure sensor went above 5V and burnt up that input on the mega. I chose to go with the rugged circuit's megas for this build. They have better onboard power supplies that I can reliably run on 12-24V, dedicated screw terminals for power input, holes for DIN mounts, and over voltage protection on the IO. However, these are almost 10x the cost of a cheapo mega.

 

[tracer bullet]

Love this thread, and great job. As if you didn't already know.

I'm an engineer at a medical device manufacturer and fairly familiar with automation equipment. I mention it only to say - wow - you've got a pretty incredible setup!

 

[bruce_the_loon]

Crane, just read the entire thread. You are brilliant, committed and probably slightly nuts. I love the setup.

 

[mkosonen]

Great idea on the rugged boards, voltage spikes sure can wreak havoc with the boards. I sometimes get some flyback spikes form my natural gas ignitors, even though its all shielded... A Hot Surface Ignitor would fix that issue, but thats a bit of rework. I'm prototyping with my 11gal batch system using traditional MEGAs, my 1.5bbl automated rig will be on the AutomationDirect P1AM-100 Arduino platform. It is UL listed, which has a benefit if I decide to partner with a fabricator to build pilot brewing systems.

 

[Gruel]

Still pretty awesome! (I think I already commented earlier.)
Regarding oxygen sensors: if I remember correctly, the oxygen measurement heads were going bad and had to be replaced with some regularity (every two years?) on the ODH (oxygen deficiency hazard) monitoring system of a large installation I was working on a decade ago. Now maybe/hopefully the dissolved oxygen detectors are different.

 

[crane]

From what I have read rebuilding doesn't always require replacing the membrane. It may only need to be cleaned and refilled with new electrolyte. Also the rebuild time is dependent on many factors like heat cycling, vibration, and pressure. But yes you are correct that these do have an additional cost of periodic maintenance.

 

[crane]

Making some progress on the control panels build.

 

[BrunDog]

My eyes be BUGGIN’!! Lessgoooo!

 

[crane]

My eyes be BUGGIN’!! Lessgoooo!

After watching the unicon build videos I decided to buy a riveter. Quite happy with rivets over nuts and bolts. You might find a couple more things I picked up from those videos.

 

[crane]

 

[crane]

With 2 large enclosures the amount of spray paint cans needed for a couple decent coats becomes rather obnoxious and is getting into the price range of a quart of car paint. I bought this paint gun almost 20 years ago when I built a dune buggy. I figured I should use it at least once every 20 years. Let's see how this goes.

 

[WayFrae]

Nice! I am loving the progress! I get excited each time you post in here. I will be starting my build soon. The parts have started arriving this week!

 

[BrunDog]

Tease!

 

[crane]

So instead of making a schematic/wiring diagram I took a different approach. Each panel has over 90 different components in them. The resulting schematics would be split across too many pages to make it easily digestible. Instead I created a spreadsheet that contains the "netlist" for each control panel. The particular format I chose is what's called "netlist by part" as opposed to "netlist by net". This is a large table that contains 1 row for each pin/port of every device in that panel. Each line shows the from/to relationship between pins and has a unique identifier (Wire Name). Similar to a circuit board design there is a unique reference designator (REFDES) for each component. The pins for each component are numbered sequentially as well as having a name for its function. The resulting netlists have 700 lines/pins and 859 lines/pins for the 2 panels. Not all pins are used on all components so the wire count is going to be ~300 for the high voltage panel and ~400 for the low voltage panel.

Being able to sort/filter the netlist in spreadsheet format makes this easier to trace signals around.

 

[crane]

Painting going down today. First coat on.

 

[crane]

It's raining/hailing in San Diego, so it's a great time to work on wiring.

 

[crane]

This one is ready to be mounted in its enclosure

 

[tracer bullet]

Nice work. Especially the labeling!

I suppose you are familiar with wire ferrules? They are extra up-front effort but are convenient if you ever decide to move things around.

 

[crane]

I was going to use them for some of the connections. While wiring the other night one of them broke off leaving the ferrule stuck in the mega breakout board. I had a hell of a time getting it out and ended up destroying one of the screw terminal sections in the process. Luckily I was able to unsolder one from another board and fix this one.

 

[BrunDog]

LEGIT!!

 

[crane]

 

[crane]

Getting ready for a weekend of soldering connectors.

 

[Tartan1]

Should be a breeze, looks like you have all the right tools for the job. How do you like the air gun, is it as precise as an iron ? I was considering purchasing one of these to add to my iron collection.

 

[crane]

Air gun is only for heat shrink, not soldering. It works well for how cheap it was.

Also talking about precision, the hakko solder stations are about as good as you can get. Much better than metcals in my opinion.

I like the fact that both soldering iron and heat gun go into standby mode when you place them in their holders, and both heat up in seconds. The hakko beeps when it gets to temp so you don't even have to look at the display.

 

[Tartan1]

+1 on Hakko solder stations, I have the FX 888D station. Got tired of melting components and terminals with my old iron.

 

[crane]

Got the high voltage panel done! Ready for testing everything out.

 

[crane]

Mounted the front panel of the low voltage panel today

 

[crane]

Finished up the low voltage panel.

 

[BrunDog]

Work of art!

 

[crane]

So between the 2 panels, here are all the features. I have 3 arduino megas that have all but one analog input used.

39 12V relays for ball valves and solenoid valves
8 proportional valves
4 DPDT relay board for the large electronic butterfly valves
4 channel SSR board for AC pump control
4 always on 110V outlets for MFM transmitters/etc.
8 always on 12V outputs for dosing pump/hop boss/etc.
8 thermistor inputs (2 used for chassis exhaust temperature monitoring)
5 IFM SM6004 inputs (flow and temperature)
2 Micro Motion MFMs (density, flow, temp)
3 PH meters/sensor (PH and temperature)
4 DO meters/sensors (DO and temperature)
1 conductivity sensor for monitoring RO filter TDS
8 pressure sensors/0-5V inputs
Current sensor for heating elements
3 heating element outputs (2 are using my time sharing solution)
5 port network switch. 1 uplink, 3 megas, 1 spare
2 fans for each panel
panel mount USB connector for each mega for FW upgrades

Since I am using the Rugged Circuit's megas, I can/am powering them off of the 24V power supplies. This allows me to monitor the DC ok outputs from the 5V and 12V power supplies. As long as 24V is up, then the megas and ethernet switch will be powered on, and able to communicate. If there is a problem with the 5V or 12V power supplies I can have an alarm for that.

 

[mkosonen]

That is quite the build, very well thought out! Amazing data collection too. What are you going to use for data storage? What size batches are you going to brew? Cheers!

 

[crane]

I use Brucontrol so that uses a sql database for data storage.

I typically brew 5 gallon batches, but do an occasional 10 gallon batch.

 

[cfrazier77]

Impressive would be the understatement of the year, amazing!

 

[crane]

Playing around with making an ethernet/screw terminal shield/carrier for the mega. Got a ways to go...

 

[crane]

And off to the fab she goes. Should see 5 of these back by the end of next week.

 

[mashpaddled]

I have no idea what I'm looking at in most of these pictures but that is some really impressive work.