Important features for a brew timer

[Quyzi]

So I've got all these microcontrollers left over from college (and a vast assortment of components), and a 16x2 lcd screen. I thought it would be neat to recycle them into a brew timer. Right now, it counts up in seconds from 00:00:00 until you turn it off or reset the controller, but that's not particularly useful.


So, my question is, what features would you find important on a brew timer? I'll take the best of them and implement them.

 

[kh54s10]

I'm not certain what all your components can do, but first off I would want it to count down.

I use the timer in Beersmith and really love that it tells how long to the next step and lists what is included in that step.

There is also a pause in case you need to stop for some reason, like running out of propane, and want to continue for the original time length.

 

[Quyzi]

I'm not certain what all your components can do, but first off I would want it to count down.

I use the timer in Beersmith and really love that it tells how long to the next step and lists what is included in that step.

There is also a pause in case you need to stop for some reason, like running out of propane, and want to continue for the original time length.

Well, it all starts with a RTC (realtime clock) that keeps track of time. Implementing multiple alarms would be a simple addition. Do you know how beersmith saves information? It would be interesting to try and parse the beersmith data and set up alarms based on it. Pausing the timer is not a problem either.