As some of you know, I was out of town for the past few days in St. Louis visiting the Anheuser-Busch facilities there for a business-related meeting. Part of that trip provided me with an opportunity to talk shop with one of the brewers, a packaging engineer and their engineering manager as well - and I have to admit, these people ARE passionate about beer and their product. From what I could tell, everyone at AB loves working for their company and are commited to making their products succeed and reflect the highest standard of quality. I came away a believer in that regard, although my taste buds stilll do not enjoy lager-style beers as much as they probably should.

We had an opportunity to tour sections of their facility. I could easily write pages and pages about the experience, and came home with about 35 photos and a few goodies as well. My day as a brewer’s assistant at Twin Lakes was pretty cool because I got to take my knowledge of the brewing process and see it on a big scale - well if Twin Lakes is big, then AB is colossal. It is next to impossible to convey the sheer size of their brewing equipment - and St. Louis is only one of 12 locations operating in the continental US. These guys produce massive amounts of beer.

One of the highlights of the trip was a 4-course beer dinner hosted by AB and the head chef at Sage Restaurant. One of their brewing guys (Alfonso) and a packaging engineer (Danielle) gave the group an education on how to savor and appreciate beer before the dinner began, and had brought along an ingredient kit as an educational tool. People were allowed to sample the malts and smell the hops, and were led through a flight of beers where differences and different flavors were discussed. Despite my bias against lager beers, I still enjoyed sampling and trying the beers I would typically walk past at State Line…. and found a few that were actually excellent lawnmower candidates for the summer.

The food at Sage was wonderful, and paired very well with the Michelob products selected. I think my favorite was the Michelob Porter that came with dessert (no suprise to most of you out there as my tastes are known to walk the dark side), but the Amber Bock and Pale Ale were also satisfying. My only regret is I didn’t get to hang out much after the dinner, but I was completely exhausted having been up since 3:15 CST - So I made a b-line for the door and went back to the hotel to crash.

I know AB is considered to be “The Borg” by many of you homebrewers out there, but let me tell you - if assimilation means that the bought out companies are as happy as the folks I saw in St. Louis, there are no losers… And if I ever sit down in a restaurant where my choices are limited and Budweiser is available, AB is getting my business, no question.

Oh yeah - the goodies. The ingredient sample kit they used at the beer dinner was given to me the following day at our meeting. I haven’t weighed the ingredients yet, but I estimate its something around a pound each of chocolate, black, caramel, wheat, and pale malts with an additional pound of rice and maybe an ounce of mystery hops. It also had several staves of beechwood… which I will have to try out just for fun. I intend on vacuum-sealing everything and storing it for the time being, but plan to brew an “AB ingredient” beer in the near future and send some of it back to the AB folks as a thank you. Not sure what the hops are, nor do I feel confident of their stability due to the fact that they’ve been exposed to heat and air several times at least while I was around - I will most likely still use them but as flavor / aroma hops where the IBUs aren’t so critical.

So tonight I spent some time playing around with Diptrace and I think I’ve arrived at a relatively clean PCB design for the main pump skid board. As I’ve stated in previous posts, I intend on splitting the sensor and control panel boads from this main board and using 10-pin headers to connect them together. This is my first attempt at a PCB design - hopefully it looks like a workable one. I guess we’ll find out when I get the stuff to etch one… It’ll either work or need to be reworked.

At some point I’ll have to upload my PICAXE VSM schematic and PCB design files up to the SkyDrive, although I seriously doubt anyone out there is gonna download them to mess around. I suppose at the very least it might be a good backup if a tornado ever hits my house or something.

I also swung by Home Depot on my way home and picked up some 1/2″ 8-32 machine screws so I could mount the SSRs to their respective heat sinks. I got both mounted, although I ended up hosing two of the Crydom heat transfer pads in the process. I got a couple extra expecting my first try would not be pretty - good thing too. By the third attempt I had learn all the important aspects (read “what-not-to-do”), and I nailed both mountings without issue. I also put the little acrylic covers over the SSRs… I’ve managed to carelessly brush my finger across the two 120V terminals a few times when the circuit was energized and zapped myself good… So enough of that.

I am still struggling with the enclosure for all this. An obvious solution is for me to ask Donna to weld up a 10″ x 7″ x 5″ box out of 1/32″ sheet metal or something. We don’t exactly have the tools required to cut the pieces to size or make the necessary holes for switches, LEDs, etc just sitting around the house (we’re not a metalworking shop, despite the TIG welder)… And I’m having second thoughts about making an enclosure of plastic because I’d hate for the heat to warp the enclosure or worse - melt it or set it on fire. I also am not sure where to get the plastic I want / need - I looked at some Lexan at HD today and it is just to flimsy. I could buy a ready-made enclosure from Allied Electronics, but they are REALLY costly (like $50 minimum)… So what to do? Maybe I’ll just get a heavy-duty plastic toolbox… But man, that would look ugly. Like I said… I don’t know what I want to do.

Well, I banged out 95% nthe complete pump skid circuit tonight… this includes reading two temperature sensors (LM34s), controling two pump SSRs based on both level switches and the manual override “ON” switches (although I did not bother hooking the SSRs and pumps to the darlington driver IC). It also calculates the elapsed time between the low level switch dropping (signaling the grant pump turning off) and when the high level switch raises using the DS1307 data. After yesterday’s problems, I am relieved that this piece works well. Once I experimentally determine the liquid volume between these two events, I’ve got a good way to calculate a number of different (and useful) parameters, such as sparge runoff rate and estimated total sparge time.

The circuit itself is a nightmare rats nest of jumper wires. This picture certainly underscores the need for me to work on getting some PCBs made. Best would be two sided, but I’m not sure I can bite off making 2-sided PCBs right out of the gate. The exact pin specifications of the inputs and outputs are also up in the air - I have found that changing those around is essential to getting an optimized PCB design generated in Diptrace. Although I suppose I could try running the traces myself manually, I honestly doubt that I could do much better than the program’s autorouter. Best to try to orient things so the autorouter comes up with some clean lines, and then if I need to tweak it here or there I can.

The output of the circuit is also up in the air right now. I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do with the data I’m generating since I won’t be hooking it up to a PC or main sculpture circuit anytime soon. I thought about using my 4×20 LCD screen and displaying the data on there, but it seems a little crazy to use a $50 component on something like a low-tech grant. Maybe even gratuitous…. There will certainly be room on the control panel, since it will have just two switches and a handful of LEDs - The LCD could fit very nicely above that. This screenshot simply shows the elapsed time calculation and the raw temperature reading. To calculate degF some additional manipulation is required (namely multiplying by .488), but I was planning on doing that in code instead of inside the PICAXE code. That would also allow me to do some calibration, whereas PICAXE calculations would require new program downloads to make changes.

On another (more annoying) note - I broke my 3rd Autosiphon tonight trying to disconnect the racking tubing from the plunger. I had finished moving my Octoberfest to a keg, and was cleaning it in the sink. It always f’n breaks in the same place. Looks like another $13 bucks down the tubes. These things, regardless of how careful you are, just seem to wear out after about a year of heavy use. That sucks.

I am so friggin frustrated. I spent the entire evening trying to get my 28X PICAXE chip to talk to a DS1307 real time clock chip using the I2C protocol. It has been over 3 hours, and I am no closer to getting this thing to work. I have ripped everything out except the pieces I need to download a program and read from the I2C network.

The PICAXE programming manual says the following about the readi2c command: “If the i2c hardware is incorrectly configured, or the wrong i2cslave data has been
used, the value 255 ($FF) will be loaded into each variable.”… well guess what I get when I fire up my board and see the feedback from my PICAXE chip:

Hey look! All 255s! Something isn’t working right! FANTASTIC. The code came right out of the PICAXE manual, so I know that’s not the problem.

I have looked at this stupid circuit for way too long tonight, and I am beyond pissed off at this point. I have assembled much more complicated circuits than this one, and for whatever reason this DS1307 chip is defeating me. I need to figure it out to measure the elapsed time between my grant high and low float switch triggers, and then back-calculate the sparge flowrate. Part of my problem might be the “crystal” I am using, which came from P H Anderson along with the DS1307, but he knows what he’s doing and I can’t believe he’d sell me two bum crystals or two bum DS1307s - Yeah, I’ve swapped both out numerous times and have not found any difference. This has got to be user error, my fault, its right under my nose and I can’t see it.

Tomorrow is another day… and perhaps I’ll figure it out then, if I don’t just beat this stupid IC into oblivian with a hammer first. If my new 28X1 chips come in tomorrow, I might try swapping the PICAXE out too… but the 28X should work just fine.

ARGH!!!

At least I got 10 gallons of porter racked into secondaries and a keg preped for my Octoberfest… So while I killed my night on electronics, I did get something meaningful done in the beer department. I also managed to climb on the treadmill for 40 minutes… so yay me.

I’ve been slowly working on the grant / pump skid prototyping. Some more electronics components (primarily a new Crydom 1210 SSR, heat sink, and a load of Molex headers) came in from Allied Electronics today, and I spent some time figuring out how best to crimp the wire into the header socket terminals. They are so small and easily bent that I hosed 7 of them before I got a decent crimp… good thing I ordered 100 of them knowing I’d mess the first few up. It took a few iterations to also figure out how much/little to strip the wire back. I found my wirestrippers did a very poor job for the wire I’ve got on hand, and ended up getting the best results with an Xacto knife and a steady hand. These initial tests were just with 2-conductor wire - I can’t even imagine what a pain a 10 conductor wire will be. I am actually thinking of using a mix of regular CAT 5E LAN cable (8 conductor) for the signals and some 18 or 20 gauge wire for the 5V and GND lines. It will not be the cleanest approach, but I don’t think 10 conductor wire is very common - and stripping ribbon cable sounds completely unappealing.

This weekend I also did some messing around with my remaining PICAXE 28X1 and found it is totally fried. The same download circuit that works great with a 28X (and 4Mhz resonator) does nothing when the 28X1 is plugged in. I even tried my REV-ED prototype board since it is guarenteed to be wired correctly, and nothing - so I ended up ordering a couple more 28X1 chips from Advanced Microcircuits which should arrive in a few days. I don’t know that I really needed them, but not having to fool with an external resonator and the extra program room and RAM available can’t hurt.

I have been doing a little more playing around with the PICAXE VSM environment to simulate the circuits and also made some major headway understanding the DipTrace software package for designing custom-etched circuit boards. I don’t have any of the stuff I would need to actually etch my own boards at this point, but I suspect I will try it out sometime in the next month or so. It shouldn’t be overly difficult, provided I find a local provider of the materials I need. Radio Shack has been getting out of the components business, so I don’t know if I can really get it from them… most stores don’t even have a components section anymore.

I’ve been spending most of the last week reaquainting myself with all the knowledge I’ve lost on electronic circuits since college. I ordered a copy of “Practical Electronics for Inventors” using an Amazon gift certificate I got for my birthday, and I have found it to be a very good reference. You can get as down in the weeds as you want to - there is plenty of theory buried within these pages, but as the author states in his introduction, if that isn’t your thing than just skim past all the equations and theory diagrams until you get to something you feel is useful. It covers the full spectrum. It has great reference pages at the front and back for component labeling and common circuits, and I have not been at all disappointed. A very good $30 textbook - better than the $100+ one I bought at my university 13+ years ago (and quickly resold once the class was over).

I also have spent some time learning the PICAXE VSM software, for which I emphatically echo Arnie Wierenga’s comments - completely worth the price tag. Between the circuit simulator and my textbook cited above, I have remembered probably most of the useful knowledge I got out of my university education. It took about 4 hours or so before I really started to understand how to build circuits and simulate them, but I feel confident in my skills now. I have assembled a rough outline for the grant / pump skid circuit, and it correctly models what I wish the control panel and PICAXE microcontroller to do. I’ll have to post my design and chip BASIC files once I’ve got everything worked out the way I want it.

Most of my remaining questions are around PCB production and how to break the functionality apart (or keep it together, as the case may be). Do I try to produce a separate board for the control panel and tie it back to the main board with a ribbon cable and some header connectors? Do I just do 2 conductor jumper wires up to the control panel components and leave the main circuits back on the base board? I like the idea of a separate control panel board because if I hose something on the main board (or need to rework it), there is the potential of reusing the same control panel board.

I am also not sure how I am going to tie the sensors into the board thru the case - I’ve been toying with the idea of using regular old RJ11 jacks and phone cord since they are cheap, abundant, and easy to replace. That could also necessitate the need for a seperate miniboard for the sensor jack tie-ins. Again, I don’t know where I am going with all this.

Another load of electronic components (including a SSR for the transfer pump) is on its way from Allied Electronics. I’ll probably mock up a prototype box using plexiglass or something once I get everything together. Mounting the VAA505 power supply will be problematic without actually etching a board and soldering it in, but I’ll figure something out - even if it is the ugly alligator clip solution I am currently using. 

I did brew beer this weekend - a brown porter. It was very uneventful, and the 10 gallons is actually done fermenting - it finished in around 48 hours. I am very pleased and can’t wait to keg it.

Well, once again I am thwarted by the annoying restrictions of WordPress.com and its blogosphere. I cannot directly upload my proof-of-concept video for that grant here, so I am hosting it over on Microsoft Live spaces in my SkyDrive. I wish it weren’t necessary, but apparently you get what you pay for - and since I am paying nothing for this blog space, I should expect nothing in return…

Here is the MPG.

Its pretty dark and scary down in the basement, and the video is reflective of that mood. I also call the top float switch a “float valve”, much to my chagrin - but hey, that wasn’t really rehearsed and I rarely nail things on the first try. I have alot of work remaining, namely the control panel and display, but after today’s progress I am optimistic that this will come together just fine.

As I indicated in my previous post, I was somewhat concerned whether the VAA505 component was going to be stable enough and adequate to power my PICAXE. Over and over I have heard that one of the most important aspects of designing and coding your own microcontroller circuits is a stable power supply - and these PICAXE chips are pretty sensitive to that. After fighting how exactly to connect to the various posts, I settled for some alligator clips. That allows me to have solid connections without having to solder wires to the posts (which would essentially ruin it for ultimately mounting to a PCB). After fighting some stupid mistakes in my download circuit wiring, I managed to get the memory cleared on the chip and upload a simple test that blinks the green LED every 1/2 second.

This is very encouraging - I will be picking up a couple more of these power supplies in my next order to Allied Electronics, since I need to order another SSR for the mash tun top-up pump circuit. At US$17, they really are a good deal considering buying an AC transformer, bridge rectifier and all the other nonsense it would take to build your own stable 120VAC->5VDC power supply would probably cost about the same - and this is super-compact and off-the-shelf.

I actually did a very quick test using the SSR, the cooling fan, and the picaxe all wired into the same voltage source (an old computer cable & receptacle I scavenged from an old system) - No problem! The Crydom SSR switched on my pump, the cooling fan kept cooling, and the PICAXE didn’t miss a beat while I played around. When I have a little more time this weekend, I plan on building the test rig for the grant, wiring in the float switches, and coding up the PICAXE 18X chip…. truly prototyping the system, in other words.

My development area is a total mess, and I need to do some housekeeping before that happens.

I am just so damn excited… I got a bunch of new toys to play with in the mail today, and I couldn’t contain myself - I had to come here and write about them. I suppose I *should* be downstairs in the basement playing with them, but I’m holding off until tomorrow to do that. The picture has captured pretty much the gist of the new gear, all of which is going to a new “grant skid” which I have prattled on about before.

First and foremost is the 1.5 gallon SS grant vessel itself. Its not much to look at, but it will be the perfect size to function as a grant. I had them weld in an extra 1/2″ coupler so it would accomodate two horizontally mounted float switches - perfect for high and low level detection. The Madison M8700 is supposed to be good to 105 deg C, so they will be more than able to take the < 180 deg wort. The grant also came with stainless false bottom and glass top, neither of which I forsee getting much use. The grant is actually marketed as a hopback from MoreBeer.com, but since I don’t forsee doing anything requiring a hopback and a grant is going to require leaving the lid off, again - probably won’t see much use. I may ultimately punch a fourth hole and install a 1/4″ thermowell in the grant for a temperature probe, but it will probably be easier just to read the temperature in the outlet hardware (put a stainless T in where the barb fitting currently is).

I also picked up a bunch of new electronic gear to tinker with:

• A Cosel VAA505 power supply that converts 120VAC to 5DC - perfect for powering a picaxe, some SSRs, and a 5V exchaust / cooling fan
• A pair of 2803A Darling Driver ICs for driving the SSRs, just in case the PICAXE output current isn’t sufficient. I had read elsewhere that Crydom SSRs often need a little more controlling current that many ICs will natively support, so this is kind of a backup plan
• The Crydom D1210 SSR - Normally open, Controls 120V 10A with a 5V control current. Should be more than ample for switching my March TE-5C-MD pump on and off. If this one works well, I will get a second one to control the HLT top up pump.
• A 2″ x 3″ crydom aluminum heat sink - These SSRs supposedly get pretty hot. I’m betting for the kind of duty cycle I’m going to need, this smaller one should be ample, particularly when mounted near the exhaust fan.
• A little 15CFM 5V fan - When power is going to this unit, the fan is going to be running trying to keep things cool. I’m hoping that the 15CFM will be adequate - I may put a LM34 temperature sensor in the box somewhere just to take readings and confirm. If I have to upgrade the fan to something with more flow, I’ll do it down the road.

How I am going to work the VAA505 power supply into the design has me a little baffled due to the pin configuration and post type - the pins look like they plug into breadboards. Maybe I just get some standard header connectors? As the picture indicates, there are the two AC connections on one side, a ground in the middle, and the DC output on the other. The board itself is only about 1″ x 2.5″ so it is tiny, and I am amazed that it can actually do a one-step 120VAC to 5VDC conversion… skeptical even. Tomorrow evening, my first point of attack is to see if I can get a PICAXE 08M chip running using that supply and a standard 120V plug - I’d rather sacrifice an 08M than one of my 40X1s. Hopefully this little power supply won’t turn out to be a bust.

In addition to this stuff, I’m also checking into some new software packages that Arnie Wierenga turned me on to, namely DIPTrace and PICAXE VSM for PCB prototyping and circuit simulation, respectively. I have little doubt I could make this happen without those, but I the software will certainly help ensure I have fewer iterations and mistakes along the way.

Man, this is one seriously geeky post. What the heck does this have to do with brewing beer?!?! Oh right… grant.

Donna took her welder out for a test drive today. No electrical problems - she arc welded a few test pieces of metal, and is planning on spending more time tonight doing more beads as practice. First order of business after her test run was to get a floor fan or something to blow the smoke out of our garage - even situated close to the door, it still accumulated pretty heavily inside the garage area. Longer term I will get an adjustable trunk exhaust line that she can position right next to the welding piece and suck up the fumes. It worked perfectly, the main house circuit didn’t trip, and to be honest - I didn’t even see the lights dim. Looks like everything is green.

I’ve been doing a little work on the grant skid design - mainly making sure I’ve got room for the solid state relays and circuitry the skid will require. I also adjusted the design so it uses 100% 1″ box steel for the frame - After doing a cost analysis, I wasn’t saving much weight or cost by going with angle iron, so why bother with a mixture of pieces? The electronics and hardware for the grant prototype are already on their way and will be here Mon/Tues of next week. I should be able to work up a test rig in short order and figure out what control panel layout I want. I think I’ll mock up the control box using thin particle board or something similar, and move it to something more industrious once I’ve got everything worked out the way I want.

On another note, I’ve made my SketchUp model and BrewzNET source code files available via Skydrive over on Micorosoft Live. Unfortunately WordPress is restrictive when it comes to the allowed upload formats, so without pulling some extension hocus-pocus, I have to host elsewhere. Check the Downloads page of the blog for links over there. I won’t make any promises on the models being perfect - most of them have "hidden" items that must be displayed. Grant skid file is a perfect example - Most of it (except the control box) is hidden in the uploaded version. All you need to do to view everything is Edit -> Unhide -> Everything and the whole model will pop up for you.