UberFridge

[papercrane]

I found this really cool project online, UberFridge

UberFridge is a homebrew fermentation temperature controller that I have built from my old fridge. It runs on an Arduino Nano and an Asus WL520GU router. It can control the temperature of a fermenting beer with 0.1 °C accuracy. Temperature graphs and settings can be viewed in a web interface over WiFi.

Up until now I fermented my beers in a bucket in my kitchen. Because ales usually ferment around 20 °C, this is fine when it’s not to hot outside. Last summer I had to stop brewing for a few months because the temperature in my house got up to 26 °C. To be able to brew all year round and to have a bit more control over the fermentation temperatures I started my UberFridge project. For a quick overview of the features, check out the video:

Features

• 2 temperature sensors, one in the fermenting beer and one in the fridge.
• PID control of the beer temperature with 0.1 °C accuracy
• Predictive on-off control for the fridge temperature to keep it in a -0.5 to +0.5 °C range.
• Modes of operation: constant beer temperature, constant fridge temperature or beer temperature profile
• 4×20 character OLED display
• Data logging on a USB stick in JSON and CSV format
• Web interface over WiFi
  • Graphs of beer and fridge temperature history
  • Change mode of operation and temperature settings
  • Temperature profile over time can be set in a Google Spreadsheet
  • Arduino can be reprogrammed via web interface

[Downs]

This is v cool.
I'm just starting to play with an arduino board at my office.
Arduino is quite cool and very powerful with what it can do.

[jeffsmith]

Wow, I'm strongly resisting the urge to order an Arduino kit…

[papercrane]

I was brainstorming a PID controller and thought the ethernet shield would be the way to go for network communication, but his solution of using an old router + serial communication looks better to me. Probably cheaper as well.

[TimG]

Wow.. that is pretty hardcore (just skimmed it). I just wired up one of the $25 ebay controller's a couple weekends ago, seems to control the temperature just fine. Might be a tiny bit of overshoot every now and then (say 1 degC) but nothing drastic. While neat, I really think the benefits from the complexity don't out weigh the time spent (tons of work learning all that.. mind you he really has educated himself to do so much more).

Tim

[Graham.C]

The biggest benefit I can think of is remotely being able to raise the temperature for laugering. Now you can do it while on vacation.

I had never heard of Arduino, but man is that cool. I'm just reading over their webpage now. This seems like a really cool toy, that could be used for all sorts of stuff.

[papercrane]

I think the $25 controller is perfect for the job, but sometimes I just want to go crazy and make something over-the-top like this. The author is a recent electrical engineer student, so I doubt it was much of stretch for him to build this. Personally I'd love to get into Arduino programming, it would be a nice change from the day job.

[know1]

That's hardcore. Arduino is massively powerful and relatively simple and inexpensive for copious applications. I too have an ebay special that seems to work just fine but this is totally a case of "just because I can"