Electric Brewery's

[Scott H]

We spoke about creating a discussion so people who have or people who are thinking about and/or building can share pic's info and pitfalls to avoid.

Just about finished building my bench and hopefully will have a chance to start wiring it up this weekend. Pics to follow shortly.

[Adam Sparks]

Anyone have a good lead (local) on adjustable dc power supplies? I mistakenly purchased a dc-dc power supply and cooked it once I put 12v ac into it…. Fortunately I hadn't plugged in my meters as well.

low voltage ac input to dc out

Again Id prefer local so I don't have to wait three weeks from china

[James Millar]

What's it for? For my stirplate (12VDC fan) I used an adjustable PWM LED dimmer to control fan speed and wired it up to a normal AC adaptor. Works fine for the stirplate and $11 delivered. Should work with other functions (varying a pump output would be easier with a ball valve on the outlet).

[Adam Sparks]

It's for supplying power to my panel meters (electric brewery clone). So 12v ac. Input and 4-5v dc output I may just have to get them from overseas and be patient. As I'm struggling to find anything local that doesn't cost a shitload

[Barry]

Personally, if you haven't cut your control panel out yet, I'd spring for a combination volt/amp meter that runs on 240VAC. That will cut 6 components down to 1.

But even if you have cut 2 holes in your control panel, again go for meters that run on 240VAC. 6 components down to 2 is still a pretty good saving on complexity and wiring.

This seller has a bunch of options: http://www.aliexpress.com/store/916391

[Adam Sparks]

Thanks Barry

I already have the transformers and meters in the panel ready to go so it should be easier to just wire up some power supplies… Although my volt meter is green despite ordering blue and the 'blue' box being ticked on the back of it. And reading online there is thread after thread of people having problems with them, incorrect labelling etc… So I may well replace them if they shit the bed.

[Adam Sparks]

Do those combo meters not need a shunt?

[Barry]

240VAC amp meters don't use a shunt, they use a donut transformer.

[Adam Sparks]

Cheers, you did explain that to me already but didn't know it could handle all the amps. Thats a way better solution, perhaps Ill put a clock or temperature meter in the other hole. Are the dimensions the same as the meters that Kal uses?

[Barry]

I'm not sure precisely, but they'd be very close. They're not extra large because they're combined if that's what you mean, same size as each single unit. I'm just not sure if they're a standardized size.

[Barry]

Cutting size for my one was 76x39mm

[Adam Sparks]

Yeah that seems standard...Sweet cheers…. I might try that meter if all else fails, in the mean time Ill probably grab a bridge rectifier to feed the dc-dc power supply and see if I can make use of all these other components I already have. This is definitely the fiddly end of the build!

How is your brewery going? Do your sestos pid's auto tune correctly?

[Barry]

Haven't done them yet, next step is probe calibration which I intended to do yesterday but didn't get to it.

After that I need sparky to come and wire me a big outlet. But I got the cost for the bits for a total rewire of our main board and I'm probably going to need to spread it across a couple of months. Scary how quickly that added up. It's not all for the brewery of course but I wanted to take the chance to change from fuses to breakers for the house, bit of modernisation.

Once that outlet is done I can autotune and finally brew!