The Brauduino (Matho’s Controller) Buy thread

[joshF]

Hey guys, has anyone else had this problem while the pump and heating element are on?
My screen works fine for everything, the unit parameters, auto stuff, manual stuff etc but as soon as i hit the switch to start everything, the screen goes all jambled like in the photo and the screen flickers ever so slightly.

Worth noting, i'm using a 240v pump and instead of a heating element, i'm using my Birko urn. Could it be drawing too much power/overloading the shield somehow?

 

[joshF]

no idea why that photo's upside down.

 

[Logman]

Lorenzo From Italy

matho kits.

Anyone else want to sell their kits?
I need one of this kits.
where can I find o order of the matho PCB's and kits?

Send a message to lael and ask if he has any left. Click here and press 'send me a message'.

 

[lael]

Hey guys, has anyone else had this problem while the pump and heating element are on?
My screen works fine for everything, the unit parameters, auto stuff, manual stuff etc but as soon as i hit the switch to start everything, the screen goes all jambled like in the photo and the screen flickers ever so slightly.

Worth noting, i'm using a 240v pump and instead of a heating element, i'm using my Birko urn. Could it be drawing too much power/overloading the shield somehow?

I actually haven't seen that before - I'm going to guess and say it is probably a soldering problem somewhere along the line, unless you've wired up the pump wrong? The power doesn't matter, as it doesn't actually pass power through the shield for the urn - it just turns the ssrelay on and off. The pump, however, is run via the relay on the board. At this point, not being a sparky, I would hesitate to offer to check it for you. But - you do need to get one to check it.

 

[djar007]

if you tap the same button that you used to start it does it clear itself?

 

[joshF]

Nope, i tried that and nothing changes. I was browsing through some of the other topics earlier today and found some similar problems others experienced. Apparently its fixed by putting on a different capacitor (100nF metallised Polypropylene Capacitor) and different resistor (100 ohm, 1/2 watt) but i really wouldn't know my arse from my elbow with that stuff. Hell, i even had enough trouble learning how to solder :lol:

 

[djar007]

This fix here may be more in line with your problem I think JoshF. Might be worth pming matho. He will be able to show you how and were to place your resistor. Regards Dave

Oh also I have been running a march pump with the V2 board so I measured the pumps resistance, which was 30 ohms and then put a resistor (330 ohms) which is slightly great than 10 x the pumps resistance in series with a 0.047uF 250v metalized cap across the pump. I tried switching the pump on and off rapidly to cause the screen to scramble but I couldn't. I'll draw up the schematic later to explain it better.

cheers steve

 

[matho]

yeah scrambled screens are a sign of EMI caused by switch an inductive load, the boards that lael have been producing already has a snubber circuit across the switch but it seems not to suppress the EMI enough. I'm looking into whether putting another snubber circuit across the load will cause any problems with the exisiting snubber circuit. Another thing that might help is to put an electrolytic capacitor across the 12 supply to further decouple the power supply, 2200uf 16v worked for me when I was switching a fridge compressor.

cheers steve

 

[Natdene]

Got mine in the mail today thanks heaps Lael! Now off to jay car

 

[elpiratilla]

Already I have received the kit has been very fast. Thank you for everything and to lael matho for your project. You ask a question. Greeting.

 

[joshF]

After blowing up my 1st kit (who would have thought those nasty positive and negative terminals were so sensitive about being put in the wrong way h34r: ) and with the luck of Lael (cheers mate) having a spare kit available, i got the new kit all soldered up and working today, so pretty pretty stoked with that.

The screen still scrambles in auto mode, although only 50% of the time which is pretty weird in itself. However, in manual mode the screen does not scramble at all. If anyone knows what could be the cause of this i'd love to understand what it is. It's no huge issue as long as its doing its thing but its kind of nice to walk past it and see the brightly lit numbers

And for those of you who bought kits and are too lazy to put it together yet, get off your asses and do it. It's the best bit of brewing equipment ever! Seriously the burnt fingers, the kit pieces you drop on the floor and can't find are all worth it when you finally finish it!!!

cheers,
Josh

 

[lael]

Nice Work!!! Looks like a massive pot. What size is it? Where did you get it?

 

[joshF]

It's just a birko 40L urn. I use a big w pot inside that and have a recirculating biab setup until i get my brau-bits all sorted. The pics were from doing a test run with just water last night.
The temp sensor is up at the top in a thermowell connected to a t-piece on the ballvalve just before the wort returns to the pot. Works well and get really good efficiency out of it but there's really no fun having to set the stc1000 for each mash step and manually control the pump. This is where the brauduino comes in :beerbang:

 

[matho]

Thanks josh for reporting how this fault appears, the only difference between the manual mode pump switching and the auto mode is in auto mode the "pump rest" message is sent to the LCD after switching the pump off, this might be causing the message to be scrambled. Maybe if I put a delay in the pump rest function to give time for everything to settle down before sending the message it will fix the problem. If you could try this sketch and tell me if it fixes the problem, I have other idea's too. Just change the .txt to .ino and load it into the arduino

View attachment brauduino2v1_pump_delay.txt

cheers steve

 

[joshF]

Hey Matho,
Thanks for this. I gave it a whirl and the screen is still doing the same thing. It's very sporadic in the sense that it will sometimes scramble and other times not. I'm doing a brew as we speak which is about 45 mins into the mash, I was watching it when it went from 66 to 68 and as soon as it went to the next step, the pump did its scrambling thing. Turned it off and on again, resumed the process and the screen is fine. Not sure if that helps you pinpoint what it might be?

I haven't got a different pump to try it with and i'm using an urn instead of a heating element so i'm not sure if that could also be a factor, outside of the hardware/wiring components?

Cheers,
Josh

 

[MastersBrewery]

Josh, is it a 240v pump? If so matho was describing a circuit to add across the pump in the other controller thread to prevent emi from it's motor

 

[joshF]

Hey masters, yea its a 240v pump. I already tried the electrolytic capacitor to try and decouple the arduino and it didn't help. It's kind of the same thing as my wonky buttons and my poorly aligned heatsink, purely aesthetic. As long as the brauduino is doing its thing i'm happy. It's just nice to see the temperatures, timers etc when u look at the screen instead of random symbols/letters etc.

 

[elpiratilla]

All I'm doing well, I have it up and running.
To continue with the rest.
greetings.

 

[elpiratilla]

I can say for a 50-liter pot parameters kp, ki, kd wear?
And also in windowSize to get value?
Greetings and thanks.

 

[CoopsOz]

Has anyone the latest pcb construction instructions? I bought a kit from Lael and no instructions came with it. I found some on here but there is no mention of an R9 (which my PCB has) plus the relay has been rotated 90 degrees.