Hello Everyone,
Me and a few buddy’s of mine are building a completely automated home brewery system for our senior design project this year, and I was hoping someone on here would have done something similar and would be willing to lend us a hand with finding all the right parts and/or give us some pointers/advice.
The design we are essentially working on (with a few modifications) can be found here: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/automat … em-132119/
In short, what we are going to do is program a user interface which will run on anyone’s computer. From there, the user will be able to set all the parameters for each of the stages you see in the previous link. Once they are finished, they will be able to save the recipe, then it will be transmitted via USB to a micro controller which will be attached to the system. This micro controller will then control all of the valves, temperature sensors, floats and burners. The user will then be able to monitor the system if they so choose from there computer by keeping the USB connected.
Now here comes the fun part, and that is finding all of the parts. We think we have found a proper micro controller which will be able to handle the system (and then some). If anyone is interested, what we are looking at getting can be found here: http://www.digikey.com/product-highligh … no_Arduino
The next thing we need is all the valves, floats, sensors and burners. This is where we could use some help, and are hoping some of you might be able to shed some light on. Temperature sensors and valves I don’t think will be a problem finding (but any suggestions would be appreciated), but the big ones are the floats and burners. What would you guys recommend getting for burners and floats? We are looking at using 5 gallon pots, and the burners need to be propane.
If any of you guys have any suggestions, we would really appreciate it. We are all relatively new to brewing, so I apologize if I missed out on some important information, but this is a big project and we would really like to get started on this as soon as possible.
