Stc-1000+

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balrog said:
Arduino has a cheap Ethernet add on shield, and others show how to use NTC or one-wire thermistors and web based logging to Xively,
Click to expand...

Actually I'm using DS18B20's sensors from Ebay - Much easier to use on the 'duino. My code is cobbled together from FuzzyeWuzze's code posted on this thread.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/real-time-online-fermentation-temperature-monitor-60-a-370966/

I think I posted my code on that thread. I can give you a schematic to follow too. It's pretty simple.
 
I received my new STC-1000 (the correct one!), took it apart and de-soldered the programming holes (What a PITA!). I've done a little soldering/de-soldering before, never had this much trouble. I had no luck with my sucker so reverted to blowing it out. It made a mess of the top side and took a while to get it cleaned up with some de-soldering braid but finally got all the holes separated from each other. My concern is the conductivity between four of the five and some of the connections on the long header row adjacent to them. I drew red lines showing which connections have conductivity between them (the ground is connected to 2 and the other 3 are connected to just 1 ea.) and was hoping that someone could verify that these are either supposed to have connections or that I still have stray solder connecting things that shouldn't be. If anyone has one open and a meter handy, could you verify it for me before I try to flash this and fry something?
Thanks!

stc1000.jpg
 
I think you've still got stray solder making a connection there, below is a pic of an unsoldered board.

However, I think the bulk of those solder joints are structural (hold the vertical board to the horizontal board). I'd bet it doesn't matter that you've got connectivity there, but I'm far from an expert on these matters so maybe someone else can weigh in.

Solder.JPG
 
RocketBrewer said:
I received my new STC-1000 (the correct one!), took it apart and de-soldered the programming holes (What a PITA!). I've done a little soldering/de-soldering before, never had this much trouble. I had no luck with my sucker so reverted to blowing it out. It made a mess of the top side and took a while to get it cleaned up with some de-soldering braid but finally got all the holes separated from each other. My concern is the conductivity between four of the five and some of the connections on the long header row adjacent to them. I drew red lines showing which connections have conductivity between them (the ground is connected to 2 and the other 3 are connected to just 1 ea.) and was hoping that someone could verify that these are either supposed to have connections or that I still have stray solder connecting things that shouldn't be. If anyone has one open and a meter handy, could you verify it for me before I try to flash this and fry something?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Wow... Looks like the solder pads came off... yikes.

The PIC MCU is on the board with the LED display so every one of the programming ports is going to have continuity with one of those solder pads. If you dont see a solder bridge, try looking with a magnifying glass, I'd try to power it up.
 
There is a bunch of gunk on the bottom of those boards that needs to be cleaned off before you try blowing the solder out - clean them carefully with denatured alcohol and a rag.
 
This may sound counterproductive, but sometimes it really helps to add some fresh quality solder first, before you try to remove the original solder.

Once upon a time, I made a modest living doing flat-rate repairs of Atari 2600 gaming consoles. There was a buffer chip between the 9-pin joystick connector and the 6502 microprocessor that would take the brunt of static discharges to the joystick connector and switches. Later versions had the buffer chip in a socket, but the earlier versions didn't, and the solder they had used was cheap and very dry (no flux). I'd use a side cutter to cut the leads from the chip. If I didn't add fresh solder, I'd have to use so much heat the pad would lift right off of the board, and if I pulled too hard I'd pull the plated-through hole out with the lead. If I added some fresh solder, the solder would melt as it should, the lead would pull out cleanly without effort, and a solder sucker would suck the hole clean of solder.
 
I've got the same problem as RocketBrewer I think... the unit powers up and I have connectivity across that bridge in the same places, so I'm guessing that's actually okay. However, when I go to click 'd' to check for the STC-1000 from the serial monitor UI just get the 'STC-1000 NOT detected. Check wiring' error... can't see anything wrong with the wiring. Can somebody check to see where the continuity on the front panel should be for each wire?
 
I checked my STC controller last night (bought 6mo ago from Elitech) and I have v1.0! I'm going to buy the UNO and a RPi to build a BrewPi and I'm wondering if I would still be able to use the UNO to flash updates to the STC?
 
That depends on what you mean.
Of course you can use the same UNO, but not at the same time of course. Depending on your setup, it might be a bit of work to 'free' the UNO (aside from mounting), you may want to dump program and eeprom after brewpi duty so it can be restored one you have updated the STC.
BTW, depending on what setup you are looking for with brewpi, I am currently working on getting brewpi running on the Arduino Yún, so that you will not need the raspberry pi. Everything on one (UNO sized) board, with WiFi and everything.
 
alphaomega said:
BTW, depending on what setup you are looking for with brewpi, I am currently working on getting brewpi running on the Arduino Yún, so that you will not need the raspberry pi. Everything on one (UNO sized) board, with WiFi and everything.
Click to expand...

This would be awesome, I'm currently using an old computer instead of the RaspPi to run BrewPi, but after looking at the Arduino Yun I am very intrigued. I would even be willing to buy the board and assist in testing :)

Dave
 
alphaomega said:
That depends on what you mean.
Of course you can use the same UNO, but not at the same time of course. Depending on your setup, it might be a bit of work to 'free' the UNO (aside from mounting), you may want to dump program and eeprom after brewpi duty so it can be restored one you have updated the STC.
BTW, depending on what setup you are looking for with brewpi, I am currently working on getting brewpi running on the Arduino Yún, so that you will not need the raspberry pi. Everything on one (UNO sized) board, with WiFi and everything.
Click to expand...

That would be awesome! So you would just have the BrewPi shield and the Yun? Or would you need the UNO as well? I'm very new to this and have zero electronics knowledge (but I'm eager to learn!).
 
No you would not need an UNO only the Yun.
Nice that there is an interest, but Im still trying to get it working, so dont rush into it just yet. I will probably start a new thread if I can get PoC working.
I just thought Id mention it, so if you are interested dont waste money on an UNO when you might want a Yun in the end.
 
Thank you so much alphaomega for all that you have done with this neat little device. I just got a 1.0 in from ebay (mixtea), and am waiting for my uno to get off the slow boat before I dive in. With regards to the Yun, did you ever doubt there wouldn't be any interest? Now there is something else on my must have list! Again, great work and thanks for sharing your talents! You have made many people very happy!
 
I received my new STC-1000 (the correct one!), took it apart and de-soldered the programming holes (What a PITA!). I've done a little soldering/de-soldering before, never had this much trouble. I had no luck with my sucker so reverted to blowing it out. It made a mess of the top side and took a while to get it cleaned up with some de-soldering braid but finally got all the holes separated from each other. My concern is the conductivity between four of the five and some of the connections on the long header row adjacent to them. I drew red lines showing which connections have conductivity between them (the ground is connected to 2 and the other 3 are connected to just 1 ea.) and was hoping that someone could verify that these are either supposed to have connections or that I still have stray solder connecting things that shouldn't be. If anyone has one open and a meter handy, could you verify it for me before I try to flash this and fry something?
Thanks!
Click to expand...

I finally was able to take apart my fermentation controller to verify the continuity of these pads. My STC was still OK!
I plowed ahead with the project, fighting the install of drivers for the Arduino UNO as my windows 7 laptop has no COM or LPT ports showing in Device Manager (That's how the Arduino website tells you to go). After much research and head banging, I finally just tried installing the USB drivers for the device directly (the computer showed "unknown Device" which I assumed had to be the Arduino). It worked! It took me a little while to figure out how to download and install the sketch but the actual flashing of the device was a piece of cake after that following alphaomega's directions.

End result was a functioning STC-1000+ !!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks so much to alphaomega and the rest of you for all the countless hours you have put in developing and testing this project. This is one of the coolest things I've seen done here! I'm going to hook this one up to my keezer today.
 
Hi!
I have uploaded a change to the work branch on GitHub, if anyone is able to help test it, then that would be great.
The only change is that I think I have managed to improve on the approximative ramping, so instead of 8 steps maximum it is now 64 steps maximum. If this works out ok (which I think it will, but I have not done ANY testing myself yet), then it is probably good enough that you don't need to care that it is not true ramping. For example for simplicity's sake say you run a ramp for 8 days, this would mean that SP would be updated once a day with v1.00 but every third hour with the new version (v1.01).
 
OK I just set up my second STC to flash and when I send 'd' I get a message saying

Enter low voltage programming mode
Leaving programming mode
Device ID is: 0x0
STC-1000 NOT detected. Check wiring.

Does anyone have any idea what is wrong. I've checked and re-checked the wiring a half dozen times and it is right. The STC seems to be powered up and working fine. I've tried to re-upload the sketch and still the same thing.

Putting the header in this one went so well, I thought this one was going to be a snap.
 
Spellman said:
Thank you so much alphaomega for all that you have done with this neat little device. I just got a 1.0 in from ebay (mixtea), and am waiting for my uno to get off the slow boat before I dive in. With regards to the Yun, did you ever doubt there wouldn't be any interest? Now there is something else on my must have list! Again, great work and thanks for sharing your talents! You have made many people very happy!
Click to expand...

Awesome news, that's the same seller I bought one from, also on a slow boat from China. This gives me hope that it's a 1.0 as well!
 
alphaomega said:
Hi!
I have uploaded a change to the work branch on GitHub, if anyone is able to help test it, then that would be great.
The only change is that I think I have managed to improve on the approximative ramping, so instead of 8 steps maximum it is now 64 steps maximum. If this works out ok (which I think it will, but I have not done ANY testing myself yet), then it is probably good enough that you don't need to care that it is not true ramping. For example for simplicity's sake say you run a ramp for 8 days, this would mean that SP would be updated once a day with v1.00 but every third hour with the new version (v1.01).
Click to expand...

I can flash it Saturday. I've got a saison to ferment on Sunday.
 
Does anyone have a link to an Amazon seller where they have gotten the proper STC 1.0 board? I already have a STC but it is v1.1 unfortunately. I'd like to order another but I'd really like to get the v1.0.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Unfortunately I don't think there's any sure-fire guarantee of getting a 1.0 with any specific vendor.

For example, atoughram has had no 1.1's from his vendor, but on the other hand, I ordered all 3 of mine from Elitech, and never had any issues. But someone else has reported getting 1.1's.

It's a bit of a crapshoot. At worst, you could send them back saying they're faulty. It'll just get refurb'd, most likely.
 
Just reflashed and started a test of V1.01. Should stabilize at 70f and then ramp to 80f over 8 hours.
 
Flashed one of mine with 1.01 yesterday and noticed that the version number was still showing 1.0 when holding both up and down.

I gave that one to a buddy to test out.
 
Then you downloaded from master branch, not work branch. You need to select the correct branch on start page.
I think I will push v1.01 to master soon though, as I think it works and no one else have reported issues either.
 
My ferment chamber heater has been tied up with a starter for the last couple of days. I'll start a test with 1.01 later today when it is freed up.

Also, I'll be fermenting a batch of weissbier this afternoon with version 1.0.
 
disney7 said:
My ferment chamber heater has been tied up with a starter for the last couple of days. I'll start a test with 1.01 later today when it is freed up.

Also, I'll be fermenting a batch of weissbier this afternoon with version 1.0.
Click to expand...

Very cool! Let me know how both 'tests' turn out.

atoughram said:
Here is a 1.01 profile that I did - would you like me to give you all of the parameters?
Click to expand...

No, that is ok. If output is what you expected, I can pretty much guess from the graph.
I have done some testing of the algorithm on my PC, and there it worked fine. The can of course be other issues on the STC. But if it seems to work, then I feel pretty good about it.
 
OK Mats - I've programmed it for a longer profile on the Saison I just brewed. Post 545 should update automatically. The profile is 68f for 84 hours, then ramp to 75f over 48 hours, hold 75f for 48hr then ramp to 85f untill it's done. (I'll cold crash it when appropriate.) Started the profile at about 2pm PST (9pm GMT) on 4-13-14.
 
First off....awesome work so far. Got to love turning something that was relatively cheap into something much much more powerful.

Out of interest, where are you getting the temperature profiles for each yeast / style of beer from?

I have and STC-1000 on my fermentation fridge but have just been setting it and forgetting until its done.

Cheers.
 
alphaomega said:
Then you downloaded from master branch, not work branch. You need to select the correct branch on start page.
I think I will push v1.01 to master soon though, as I think it works and no one else have reported issues either.
Click to expand...

I did download the work branch and verified the date on the file. Also noticed that STC1000P_VERSION says 101 in the picprog.ino that I'm fairly certain I flashed with.
There is a slight chance that I had a second IDE window open with the v1.0 sketch, but I don't believe so.
I'll try flashing another this evening and see what the results are. I definitely can't rule out human error on this one as I was programming while doing some taste testing.

Also, I gave the STC to my buddy to do some testing and he reported back something strange. It seems that the STC just does not display 80.0F. It goes from 79.9 to 80.1. Is that a result of the C to F conversion?
 
Well, if sketch says 101 then I do think taste testing may be the problem :)
If the problem persists when not tasting, let me know and I'll have another look.

That is somewhat odd. It is not because of conversion per se, but it might be due to resolution and the characteristics of the temperature/restistance curve of the probe.
The STC is originally designed for C scale, and F has almost twice the granularity.
I won't go into the details, but I find it strange that there are values 'missing' so close to the working point.
Don't loose any sleep over it though. I think it is just due to the limitations of the hardware.
 
krazydave said:
It seems that the STC just does not display 80.0F. It goes from 79.9 to 80.1. Is that a result of the C to F conversion?
Click to expand...

alphaomega said:
The STC is originally designed for C scale, and F has almost twice the granularity.
Click to expand...

I haven't delved into any of the coding or what alphaomega has done just yet, but as he stated, the STC was originally designed for C scale. Though F does have more granularity, the STC's Technical Parameters show that it's resolution for temp is 0.1C. That being said, 26.6C = 79.88 (rounded to 79.9)F and 26.7C = 80.06 (rounded to 80.1)F. Unless alpha's interpolating temperatures, a direct conversion of the input temperatures would avoid 80.0F.

Regardless, I fully agree that it's nothing to worry about. Your yeasties won't know the difference between 80.0F and 80.1F. :)

The STC Manual I snipped from was found here.

STC1000_Tech_Params.PNG
 
Hey guys, this is my first post in this thread.

First off, I want to thank you, alphaomega, for investing so much of your free time designing the code and then coming on here and helping others fix and implement it. This is how I remember forums being 10-15 years ago. This makes the forum fun and rewarding for everyone.

Also, a big thanks to everyone else who contributed, tested, posted etc on here.

I used to fiddle around with electronics (a long time ago) but haven't had much free time in recent years with the garage/fabrication business. Now I have a bit more time and this post convinced me to start dabbling again.

I'm in Canada, so a lot of what I read on forums is a bit different, especially with respect to sourcing "the goods". On friday, I ordered an STC-1000 from Amazon.ca (which as I understand it, uses a different distribution network than the US amazon.com does.) I figured, if I get the incompatible "v1.1" one, I would just run it as is and be happy with it. Well I received it today and quickly opened it up to find that it is a A400_P V1.0 board. I'm pretty happy about that.

So in case any Canadians want to undertake this project, I got it from Amazon.ca, chose simple 2-day shipping and got it in record time. (Ordered Friday afternoon, encountered a credit card problem in the evening, fixed it, and STILL got it on Monday AM. I was shocked.)

The seller I got it from is this one: (But keep in mind that it does not guarantee you will receive a A400_P board.)
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00862G3TQ/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Here are some pics:

stc1000_00.jpg


stc1000_01.jpg


stc1000_02.jpg


stc1000_03.jpg


stc1000_05.jpg


I'll probably start a separate thread when I build the box and everything for it.

Again, thanks to everyone for their contributions, love the team spirit on here!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
alphaomega said:
Well, if sketch says 101 then I do think taste testing may be the problem :)

If the problem persists when not tasting, let me know and I'll have another look.



That is somewhat odd. It is not because of conversion per se, but it might be due to resolution and the characteristics of the temperature/restistance curve of the probe.

The STC is originally designed for C scale, and F has almost twice the granularity.

I won't go into the details, but I find it strange that there are values 'missing' so close to the working point.

Don't loose any sleep over it though. I think it is just due to the limitations of the hardware.
Click to expand...


Makes sense!
As long as I get a few free minutes tonight I'll re-flash prior to any kegerator trips.

Thanks again!
 
nickmv said:
Unfortunately I don't think there's any sure-fire guarantee of getting a 1.0 with any specific vendor.

For example, atoughram has had no 1.1's from his vendor, but on the other hand, I ordered all 3 of mine from Elitech, and never had any issues. But someone else has reported getting 1.1's.

It's a bit of a crapshoot. At worst, you could send them back saying they're faulty. It'll just get refurb'd, most likely.
Click to expand...

I'd like to let everyone know that I just got my order from amazon in and it is the proper V1 unit. Mine was an 'Elitech 110V All-Purpose Temperature Controller+ Sensor 2 Relay Output Thermostat Stc-1000' and it was distributed by 'LERWAY Tech'

It may be a good chance that if you use my Amazon link above and order via the LERWAY Tech that you will get the proper version.

Good luck guys.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
krazydave said:
Makes sense!
As long as I get a few free minutes tonight I'll re-flash prior to any kegerator trips.

Thanks again!
Click to expand...

okay, just verified with certainty that I have the sketch extracted from the stc-1000p-work.zip with STC1000P_VERSION 101 going up to the arduino. The timestamp on the picprog.ino is 4/11/2014 11:30AM. No other windows open and no brew sampling while flashing.

STC version still showing 100 on button press and arduino detection is stating "STC-1000+ Fahrenheit firmware with version 1.00 detected." also.

I've tried both initializing EEPROM data and not, both with the same result.
 
I have no real soldering experience so I am planning on following figure 7
JAydibF.jpg
from the user manual. Will I need to worry about cleaning up the board at all if I attempt to use that approach? Would you just hold the pins in place by hand while flashing?
 

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