Latest brewery upgrade

[Dude]

Dedicated brewery computer:

It is an old laptop that had the backlight on the screen burned out. I put it on an external monitor and moved it all into the brewery. Now that the weather is cooler I can sit out there and do whatever I need to do--including weigh out hop additions via the USB scale (off to the right of the keyboard), surf this forum (wireless internet!), use promash, and even hook up a "brewcam" so anyone can tune into future brew sessions. Plus I have all of my music readily available on it as well.

 

[EdWort]

Sweet! Cooler weather would be welcome here.

So you're a Vikings fan eh?

 

[Dude]

So you're a Vikings fan eh?

Diehard.

 

[Chairman Cheyco]

USB scale? OMG, I thought I had it bad...

:rockin:

 

[Onescalerguy]

Way cool,Dude.



Go Bills!

 

[2nd Street Brewery]

USB scale? OMG, I thought I had it bad...

:rockin:

Don't knock it, I have the same scale. Works great.

 

[Walker]

sweet, dude... and you beat me to it! I have an old laptop in banged up shape (keyboard shot so I use an external one). It's wireless, and once I get the garage at this new house set-up, it'll be mounted to the wall out there. I've got a webcam sitting in a drawer waiting to be connected to it, too.

That laptop is dog-ass slow (400MHz?), but I'm not going to be doing anything terribly fancy with it anyway, so it should be perfect for the brewery.

Oh... and mine will be sporting a different wallpaper:


-walker

 

[Bernie Brewer]

Nice wallpaper!

 

[wstein]

ahhhh, the uses for old beat up laptops....

 

[jerly]

This might be stupid of me to ask, but what does the USB scale do? Does it do something besides weighing, like keep tables or something like that? Only curious.

 

[Exo]

USB scale...way cool!!!

Great idea on the brew-puter Dude!

 

[Brewpastor]

Very nice. But tell me more about the scale, I have never heard of such a thing.

 

[MrSaLTy]

Very nice. But tell me more about the scale, I have never heard of such a thing.

There was a thread here about 6 or so months ago where someone posted about it and I think I remember that Dude got one. If I recall correctly it was at radioshack. It may have been close out though. I think it was pretty cheap like 11 bux or something. A search may find it.

 

[2nd Street Brewery]

It was Radio Shack and they were $10 each. I had to go to 3 in my area before I found one. People also were getting them because they sell alot of stuff on ebay and used them for postage scales.

 

[RichBrewer]

Great job Dude but where did you get that ugly wallpaper?

 

[Catfish]

This might be stupid of me to ask, but what does the USB scale do? Does it do something besides weighing, like keep tables or something like that? Only curious.

it hooks up to a computer

 

[jerly]

it hooks up to a computer

Yeah, I understand that it woul do that. I just don't see a "convenience" to it if it only displays the weight. Not that I'm against frivolous gadgets at all. Just seemed that there would be more going on with it. If it cost less to get than a regular scale with a digital readout, sure.

 

[Walker]

Yeah, I understand that it woul do that. I just don't see a "convenience" to it if it only displays the weight. Not that I'm against frivolous gadgets at all. Just seemed that there would be more going on with it. If it cost less to get than a regular scale with a digital readout, sure.

I think the main benefit is (as someone mentioned) for weighing things for postage rates. The scale feeds into the computer, postage is calculated, and the postage stickers can be printed out.

 

[the_bird]

I'm curious how precise it is. My digital scale cost about twice that (maybe more, I can't remeber if it was $20 or $30), and reads in increments of 0.05 ounces. Probably don't need any greater level of accuracy than that for homebrewing.

 

[2nd Street Brewery]

It only does .1 oz but it also wieghs in 1 gram increments. I got it because my old style kitchen scale would gum up and was hard to read. Also it gave me an excuse to take my laptop with me when I brew.:rockin:

 

[the_bird]

You know, I have an old Thinkpad kicking around the house... it technically belongs to work, but they haven't seen nor asked about it in probably four years. It needs to have the O/S reinstalled, it's full of spyware, I'll probably completely clean out the hard drive - but this could be a nice brew tool.

If you buy ProMash, is there anything that keeps you from installing it on two machines? I've only played around with the free download.

 

[Chairman Cheyco]

You can install pro mash as often as you like. You download the full version exe when you buy it.