Since I started off with the STC1000  in a metallic project box and I used  UK 3 pin mains sockets for the switched outputs, I decided to keep the transportable nature of the control box when I made the BrewPi . Both the Fridge and heater are relatively low power devices so I Finally chose to use IEC sockets rated at 10A with a trailing single socket, more than adequate..

My first attempt though had fixed power tails and was  built using the DIY shield that Elco had published on his website www.brewpi.com

The MK I BrewPi enclosure

I then came across an old instrument that was being scrapped and soon after the BrewPi Mk II came into existence.

Now Complete with Elco’s Rev A shield and an  internal 5V PSU which means you can power both the RaspberryPi and the Arduino from one box. !

 

From the above to the Below

However   I wanted to tinker with the system which I couldn’t do whilst a brew was in the FV and when I came across another old instrument, I built another 

My Dev system has several changes, switched mains Input, resettable fuse, only a heat and cool output, 2 probe sockets, now with 5 pin DINs , one wired up as a 4 core and the other wired up as just a probe input. The dev system  started off with another version  Elco’s DIY shield but then as things developed and code was updated and streamlined  in the master branch  I decided to butcher the 1st build DIY shield and make it as close to Elcos purchased REV A shield, so that I could use the newer www and script branches. This has left me with a problem, an easy one and a hard one. The easy one is there are no mosfets on board to drive the relatys but teh arduino can easily drive the SSR’s so all i have to do is change the logic levels in code for the  on and off states. The hard one is the display was 4 bit mode parallel and  I decided for ease of connecting to the existing molex  to try and use an I2C display. A challenge to say the least as I’m not a C++ programmer. A lot to learn and hopefully a lot to gain in the process of trying to convert the display class ..

My DIY Shield- not suited to being Butchered	Elco’s original DIY shield – butchered