As promised I said I would upload some details of the projects I've been working on. I'd love to hear your comments and suggestions.
I built a few iSpindles from scratch and found them to be a bit hit and miss. Mine upload to Home Assistant (Home automation system) so I can keep track of everything in one place. For the effort and cost I find the most useful part is to monitor the mash temperature which can be achieved with much less effort.
Most fun project so far was the bubble counters. I use an ADXL accelerometer attached to a clothes peg clipped on to the vent to detect when a bubble escapes then measure the duration between bubbles to determine how aggressive the ferment is running and detect when it starts slowing down. This uploads to Home Assistant every minute so I can keep track of all the ferments in case there's a problem and also have record of how long they took to ferment out and at what temperatures the yeast calms down and speeds up. Is a very handy learning tool.
I'm currrently expecimenting with a load cell under my parrot to try and calculate the ABC during distillation by measuring the weight of the fixed volume of liquid in the parrot. I have a range of about 20 grams from highest to lowest ABV so it should work, I just need to bring in temp of the liquid so I can calibrate for that as well. I have a small scale under the collection vessel to tally up the yield of each cut.
Still prototyping but this is the board that I run during distillation. It has the still head temp, the weight of the parrot, weight of the yield as well as the real time weight of the gas bottle to measure gas consumption and then uploads everything to home assistant every 30 seconds for later scrutiny.
Comments, ideas, suggestions and critique all welcome!
G@spacho
