I have often considered mounting the grain mill over the mash vessel and tying the grain mill motor to a binary output of the ADIO board via a SSR in order to automate the dough-in process. This would also require a computer-controlled motorized mixer.
I've been studying the use of electric elements by Ken Schwartz
and, subsequently, by C.D. Pritchard with interest in introducing
a 240 volt electric heater element into my sparge and boil vessel
to completely eliminate the need for propane stoves. The SSR (solid-state
relay) that I use to control the heater elements is rated at 120
and 240 volts. I plan to keep the 1500 watt element to maintain
the sparge water temperature and introduce a 4500 watt element
to bring the sparge water to the target temperature.
The sparge float/potentiometer water level indicator needs to
be replaced with a pressure transducer water level indicator identical
to the one used to measure the boil wort level.
I would like to replace the Honeywell boil wort solenoid valve
with a stainless steel, direct-operated solenoid valve with a
½" pipe size and a larger orifice.
The IBM DACA ADIO board does not provide enough analog inputs
to adequately monitor the state of the brewing system. Additional
analog inputs could be used to monitor the RIMS tube inlet and
outlet temperature, the boil vessel temperature, the counter-flow
chiller inlet and outlet temperature, the mash pH,
An Intel Pentium-based motherboard is needed to upgrade the operating
system to Windows 95/98.
The existing character graphic user interface can be replaced.
I would like to integrate the control software/firmware with an
off-the-shelf recipe package. I will need to identify a package
which is capable of storing the information which the control
software/firmware needs (times, temperatures, compensated water
volumes,
) in a file format (i.e. text) which the control
software/firmware is capable of reading.
Hopdrops are solenoid-actuated tubes which are capable of dropping
hops (or other adjuncts) into the boil vessel under computer-control.
The fact that the state of the entire system is saved to a batch file can be used as part of disaster recovery. If power were to be removed from the system, the system could be restarted, specifying the batch file as input. The software could restore the system to the state as it was last represented within the batch file.
Battery backup may not be needed as long as information which is written to the batch file is flushed as it is written.
The battery backup would only supply power to the PC.