Just wanted to check in, it's been a while since I've been back. I've found some more time to work in the last few weeks and thought I was finished with the build... and then last night happened...
When I first got the controller up and running a week ago, I had my temperature probes fail. No problem, I had some extras, and I was pretty sure I had just shorted them by hot-plugging the 3.5mm causing the data to short to 5v. I wired up two new ones and was ready to go.
I tested from last Friday through Tuesday night and everything looked great, only .1 degree temp variance, reasonable compressor/heater cycles, etc...
So last night it was finally time to brew again after months of messing with this thing. I prepared an Irish red recipe with a 1.062 O.G. and WYeast 1084. I was really looking forward to it and was meticulous with my brew. Literally everything went perfectly and I was off to a great start.... until I went to put it in the chamber.
I had unplugged it as I was worried about damaging the new temp probes, so I gently placed the carboy in, wrapped the heater blanket around it and plugged it in. Everything was flawless! for about 5 minutes...
My temperature probes cut out and read null, I tried unloading and reloading the sensors, unplugging and plugging the control unit, everything I could think of for about an hour. The temp probes stopped showing up even in the device list.
Then, about an hour into troubleshooting, the whole thing stopped working... DEAD. It wouldn't power my 5v fans, but was getting enough power that the LCD display backlight was on. It showed no characters however. Eventually that quit as well and I went to bed a very angry man with a VERY warm beer.
Right now nothing is plugged in, the beer is sitting at 75 degrees (coolest I could find in my house). I'm going to ride it out, maybe it'll be an Irish Red Saison-ish kind of thing? Who knows, could turn out okay, could taste like feet.
What could have gone wrong? I'm pretty sure the power supply crapped out and/or the cheap temperature sensors were failing on their own.
I'm not going to lie, a lot of me wants to quit brewing all together at this point. I'm not having fun anymore and I feel like I'm just diving head-first into the sunk cost fallacy. I may try a new power supply and new temp probes once they arrive (too late for this beer to be saved), but I'm not hopeful. I don't think I'll ever be able to trust it to be reliable (sort of how slow/glitchy internet is world more irritating than simply having no internet). I'm worried I'll go through the trouble of getting it working again after another couple dozen hours of work, and then everything will fall apart again when I look at it funny...