WebControl Build

[wormfishin]

The other day Bokonon pointed me towards physfarm's thread https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/web-controlled-all-one-temp-controller-145395/. And I've now got one of the boards and am working on getting it all up and running.

Plan:
Have the board in a central location, running cat5 cable to my brew stand and to my kegerator and fermentation chamber areas, where I will have additional junction boxes to house the relays and outlets.

On the brewstand for now I just plan to have a heating element for my HLT and a valve and sensor to fill the hlt when required. I'll do more in the future, but figured baby steps.

I'm hoping to document this with a good bit of detail, as I am relying heavily on help from Bokonon and others in the chat for this project.

Here is the board, it's smaller than I expected:

I placed it on a sheet of paper and marked the holes with a sharpie, I then used whatever you call the sharp thing to transfer the holes to the board:

I used these spare computer case standoffs, to mount it:

I've had these hole measuring things around for years, never had a good used for them until now(guess I only needed to keep 1 not 3 though...):

9/64's was the hole size, and it needed to be 1/8 in deep. No pictures here, but I set my drill press up to drill the holes nice and straight.

Continued...

 

[wormfishin]

After drilling the hold a little drop of glue ensures they standouts won't fall out:

Here is is after attaching standoffs:

Screws used to mount it with insulators(again spare PC parts):

I forgot to snap pics of the power supply, I will do that next time I take pics:


And here is the board powered up and connected to the network:

 

[wormfishin]

Next I'm moving to the remote box that will control the Kegerator and Fermentation chamber:
I'll use 1 cat 5 cable to carry the signals from the board to this box, and then the probes will connect with cat 5 to this box as well, so I need 3 ports. I happened to have a patch panel so I cut off one section of it:

The temp probles need 3 wires, I wired 3 pins together on the back of the patch panel:

I picked up a service disconnect box at home depot for less than $7:

I removed the 'service disconnect' parts:

Next I need to mount the patch panel held in place here with tape:

There is a small opening on the bottom of the box that will allow the cat5 cables to get out with the box closed:

Next I need to get some relays and wire the 2 outlets in this box. Also need to build the temp probes(sensors on their way)

Not much to see yet, but I wanted to get a jump on the write-up.

 

[Cede]

Nice post.
I think I might go the same way with this board for a "fermoire" at least.

 

[md20_20]

Watching with interest. I have a similar plan myself but I'm not too proud to copy.

 

[radamson]

Hello All,
Wormfishin has a full mailbox, so I'm posting here if anyone else may have performed some of this or other WebController work. Thanks for any info.

Wormfishin,
I have a WebControl board and box still just sitting around a year after buying it. Do you have any updates since the posting on HBT? I guess it's been too long since that the pictures have gone Red-X. Do you still have them around or can point me to them?

I'm just getting around to having the extra time to mess with it and wondered was it worthwhile and still up and running?

thanks in advance,

Richard

 

[wormfishin]

Hey, I just cleared out my mailbox.

Sadly I shorted something in my board and I don't get accurate readings from the temp sensors. Otherwise it was going well. Likely when I get some more free time I'll get another board and try again.

Pics can be found here, http://picasaweb.google.com/nick.tr...?authkey=Gv1sRgCOzqp5WursD_KQ&feat=directlink