jwalkermed
Well-Known Member
Thanks seems like my google searches were unsucessful. The wire was all too thin. but those amazon 18awg look like they will work fine.
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Are there still radio shacks open? Every one out here is closed as of them going bankrupt last week and announcing they are selling most of their shops to Sprint.
Are there still radio shacks open? Every one out here is closed as of them going bankrupt last week and announcing they are selling most of their shops to Sprint.
Two things I'd be looking for:
- if you're powering the Uno via USB, there can be significant voltage drop on the 5V at the Uno, depending on the cable used (some aren't too bad but I've tested a couple of 18" cables that sucked pretty hard). Using a dedicated 9V wall wart to power the Uno will eliminate that problem.
- otherwise, power and ground distribution is important. The shift register - whether on a protoshield or a breadboard - should get power and ground directly from the Uno, and the LCD should get its power and ground connection directly from the Uno as well - and not from the shift register assembly. A "star" topology where everything connects at the Uno is better than daisy-chaining from the Uno through a breadboard or protoshield to the LCD...
Cheers!
You definitely want to have a couple/few capacitors (between .1uf to 1uf) across power & ground on your bread board or protoshield, especially near the shift register. I used radial leaded .1UF caps on my builds, they're the blue epoxy coated thingies in these pics:
Cheers!
g) gfisher99 - lovely setup. May I ask what the inner size of that box is, that seems like the perfect balance between keeping things compact yet manageable.!
I have the heater next to the fermenter (it's a large space heater), and both are positioned to the far left of the chamber. I have the temp probe for the beer taped to the opposite side of the fermenter.?
I remember when RadioShack was relevant. It was decades ago. In fact I remember my last hard core engagement with the local 'Shack was back in 1977, when I designed and built a series of cable TV descramblers that used two specific adjustable coils from a 99 cent bag of a dozen quasi-random fixed and slugged parts.
It was definitely before the age of integrated electronics, and way before the era of essentially disposable electronics that most consumer products have become - from telephones through televisions.
There's a mindset that accompanied that paradigm shift that pretty much puts the notion of "building" or even "fixing" anything totally out of mind.
With that a fading concept, RadioShack became a glorified mall kiosk.
The cell phone thing was an act of desperation to become relevant that had no legs.
What's sad is they won't be missed by many...
Cheers!
The fridge probe is further away, in the center, so the reading would always be cooler cause the stainless steel is getting heated primarily. I'll take a picture of it later when I get off from work.
What are people's opinions of using heating mats/belts as oppose to the space heater? I'll also be doing this in a danby fridge for the next brew. I was stuck using the larger fridge since my other fermenter is tied up with a lager right now.
Hi All,
For some reason I thought these i2C/SPI LCD backpacks (http://www.adafruit.com/products/292) from Adafruit would work for hooking up the LCD to my Brewpi system. They do work when wired to an Arduino using a test sketch, so I know they work. They just don't receive/display any data when using Brewpi. I'm using 13, 11, 10 for the pins. Any suggestions??
Unfortunately, I2C/SPI LCD modules won't work with BrewPi, which expects a 4x20 4-bit parallel LCD on the other side of an 8-bit shift register to work.
The BrewPi AVR LCD driver code is hard-wired in this manner; there's no getting around that without modifying the code.
See this thread for one way to add an LCD to BrewPi...
Cheers!
You might actually be in luck here.
Inspired to at least check the brewpi.com site to see if anyone had successfully modded the AVR code to enable an I2C or SPI - connected LCD, I found some promising threads.
http://forum.brewpi.com/discussion/1146/i2c-lcd-display-again]
http://forum.brewpi.com/discussion/385/i2c-lcd-displays
There are others.
If it's worth doing some digging and hex file uploads and perhaps pin-swapping some connections to the Uno to see where this particular rabbit hole leads, at least you know someone else did it first
Cheers!
Just a quick update.
I have been away for a while and am trying to resume the installation of this project, but there have been too many roadblock relating to the software. I am just not that comfortable with Debian systems. The hardware seems straight forward enough, but its the software that screws me up.
The PHP thing has me totally tripped up. Dont know what to do. Now I am thinking about buying it off of the brewpi website, but Elco has not gotten back to me. Not really sure why but I just wanted to know if that new brewspark has installation directions.
Maybe I will just go back to the STC
I will try to figure it out over time as like a side hobby, but right now I think I am spending way too much time on this.
Kinda sucks, because I have already gotten all the hardware for it, just cant figure out the scripts and install of the software. Ohh well
I have the same problem like you bayoujeeper..
I added decoupling caps, switched power supplies and changed relay modules. I tried very short wires from and to the shift register and the problem is still there.
What kind of load is on you relay? Im just switching a aquarium heater.
I think if there is no solution i will replace the relays with SSRs.
Happy to see your LCD is still solid.
If the RPi is definitely dead (the green activity led never blinks) the first thing I'd be checking would be power. The next would be to start pawing through /var/log/syslog to see if there's a hint therein.
Cheers!
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