temp logging

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badg3er

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badg3er from OCAU,

i have been thinking about building another folding box, with the excuse to be..... wait for it.......

a temp data logger,

i have done a bit of searching, but have found descriptions for similar set-ups with solar hot water heaters etc, but nothing that is either off the shelf or cheap...

has anyone done this here --- or got any tips?
 
Okay i know Dick Smithhyys sells temp data loggers or tools so you can make one.. i know they sell the sensors that can be hooked up..
Otherwise i have no clue.. Maybe something like what they use at those testing towers.. good idea.. but yeaaah..
Hey badg3er im also Ic3man from OCAU :p
 
use your case modding talents to homebrew
a homebrew is the happiest at 22c so why cant you use(i havnt tryed it yet) a digidoc 5 temp alert to trigger a fan relay, say pipe a air duct pipe out the side of your freezer with a case fan to the digidoc for cooling air and another temp probe to a heat belt around the barrel. cool-heat 22c constant and keep the whole lot in a coolroom panel esky.
just a thought
 
well, the whole plan is to eventually have the computer run the lot, switch on the heatbelt when it is too cold, cool it when warm(i hadn't thought of that till you mentioned it brewmaster)

but i am going down to jaycar today to see what they have.

will keep you informed
 
I have recently done the first component of temperature control in my brewery. At this stage it is in monitoring mode only where I log the temperature every minute then with a script I wrote add the data to an sql database. I have written a web front end which gives you max and min and avg temps on the time period you choose (eg days or weeks).
I have also added a graphing component as well.
I have two sensors setup, with one monitoring the ambient temp and the other monitoring the temp in the shed.
When I installed the my little custom system in the shed I didn't realise how hot it was getting, so I had to actually insulate it. This has made a vast improvement.
Here is a two day graph from October. If you have a Yahoo account you should be able to see the image after authenticating to yahoo.
Temp23-25Oct02.JPG

Not sure if I will go the next step and have the system automate some heating or cooling measures. I guess it will depend on what my monitoring trends show.

Cheers,
Doc
 
With the cooler temps this week (due to all the rain) I thought I would generate a three week graph this morning to see what was going on.
So good to see more constant temps.
In another month or so I should be able to use liquid lager yeasts in the main fermentation chamber rather than in the fridge like I am at the moment. On the down side looks like the ale yeasts might get a rest for a bit.

NOTE: There is a glitch in the graph from earlier this week after a power cut and the data logger did kick back in and I didn't notice.

What temps changes are you guys noticing ?

Cheers,
Doc

TempApr26_May17.JPG
 
Doc,

How will you keep a constant temp, I would have thought the up and down of the temp wouldn't be that good.

Rook
 
As long as the temp is reasonably constant the thermal mass of the liquid in the fermenter means the brew stays resonably constant (within a degree or two).
You will notice that the temp of the fermenters varies less than the brew house (shed). The fermenter temp is actually the temperature of the cupboard where the fermenters are.

All-in-all it works well.

Cheers,
Doc
 
For what it's worth, I got a K134 kit from www.ozitronics.com that could be used for temperature logging. It's mainly used to demonstrate interfacing a 16x2 LCD screen to the parallel port of a PC, but it also has a Maxim 1620 thermostat onboard. I modified one of the C programs to log the temperature the 1620 sensed every half hour and wrote it to a text file which I then imported into Excel and plotted......
Ozitronics also have an 1820 based solution that interfaces with your serial port and can handle 4 sensors. This would leave the parallel port free to drive a series of relays if you wish. But the cool thing about the 1620 is that it already has a 'high' pin and a 'low' pin - program it with a high and low value and when it's sensed temperature goes beyond that parameter the relevant pin becomes active. I'm gonna wire it to the K156 relay from the same place and it will turn on the fridge or the heater within the fridge, keeping my brewing environment relatively static.
 
kbekus,

Sounds like a different implementation of the same idea.
Instead of logging it to a text file, log it to a sql database.
Then it is easy enough to write a web page using php to extract your data and generate a graph using some open source software.
That is how I do it. In mid-summer it is great to generate a graph from work via the web to see what is happening in the brewhaus.
Let me know if you want more details.

Cheers,
Doc
 
Hey Doc,

would you mind pointing me toward some info in regard to logging to an SQL database like you've done. I've got a server running Redhat 7.3 so I've got the basis, but I'd now like to do what you've got. I'm not sure how I'll get the temperature reading from the sensor into SQL either, hmmm.....
 
kbekus,

The temp sensor logs to a file every minute.
The file looks like this.
04-13-2002 21:06:13 20.0C 27.0C

I wrote a script file that looks at the file every 15 mins and reads in the contents. It also creates a blank file for the sensor to input new readings.

The script looks at each line and determines if the temp has changed from the previous line. If it has then it appends the temperature readings to an input file using SQL command line syntax to import to my temperature database. The SQL database is mySQL.
When the end of the temp sensor log is reached output file is imported into the SQL database.

I've written a php/html front end to the SQL database and used PHPlot to be able to specify my time frames for my graph.

I can then use the web from anywhere and generate a temp graph.
I've also written a couple of pages that give me max/min/avg temps as well.

If you need more info then PM me.

Cheers,
Doc
 
With summer coming along I thought it was time to add some more info to my temperature monitoring page, that gives me the last few samples from the temp sensors as well as an average over the last 15 samples (typically 1 - 1.5 hours).

Seems to be working well.

Here is a screenshot.

Beers,
Doc

PS: And before anyone asks where I get the time to do this stuff, work has been a bit slow the last couple of days and until I can workout how I can brew at work I'll just work on the bits that let me remotely see what is going on in my brewery :p

DRsOrdersBrauHausTempPage16Oct03.JPG
 
Sorry for dragging up a 5+ year old thread....but Doc directed me here from another thread (the fermenter coolroom thread) and I didn't want to hijack the other thread for this discussion.

Good to see this is still working after 5+ years! Can I ask Doc what you are using for a temp probe? Im planning on using a couple of DS18S20 temp sensors to build a couple of probes, one for wort temp (inside fermenter) and another for ambient temp. Ill then be creating a similar script to yours, importing to a database then displaying via a web page. I figured Id ask how you were recording your temps before I started building my temp probes, in case you had a better idea. My idea was to just rig them up to a serial port connector (with a diode also), I believe they can be connected in parallel as they have unique identifiers.
 
.... Im planning on using a couple of DS18S20 temp sensors to build a couple of probes, one for wort temp (inside fermenter) and another for ambient temp. Ill then be creating a similar script to yours, importing to a database then displaying via a web page. I figured Id ask how you were recording your temps before I started building my temp probes, in case you had a better idea. My idea was to just rig them up to a serial port connector (with a diode also), I believe they can be connected in parallel as they have unique identifiers.
Crunched, what youre going to do, is already available via Internet: http://www.mrsoft.fi/ohj01en.htm

Im using this little proggi to log and record many different temps. Thats a multi purpose beautiful little program.

Whilst chilling the wort, Im measuring the water-in and wort-out temp (delta t), just to adjust the right ratio water flow/ wort flow.
Later Im measuring and recording the fermenting temp over a week.
Just check it out.

btw. you have to install the TMEX-driver first.


Cheers :icon_cheers:
 
Interesting Zwickel, thanks for the link. I guess my main interest at the moment is what to use as a temp probe. What are you using?
 
And how have you got it wired up? To a serial port plug or something?
 
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