Double duty from BCS 460 ??

[scott06903]

I bought a bcs 460 a few weeks ago and intended to use it for brewing and fermentation/ serving fridge control. I probably should have bought the 462 …. Since the BCS is only used a few times a month as a brewing controller, it would be a shame to let it sit idle when not brewing. I have it set up now to control 1 fermentation fridge and another is waiting to be setup as well as a serving fridge.

The bcs 460 has 4 temp inputs and 6 outputs. I have assigned the following outputs:

0 HLT
1 Boil
2 Pump1
3 Pump2
4 Hlt recirc pump
5 Fermenter 1
So that uses all the available outputs.

My temp inputs are assigned
0 HERMS Out
1 HLT
2 Boil
3 Fermenter1
So those use all the available temp inputs

What I would like to do is have some kind of A-B switch that would allow me to use the bcs 460 for both fermentation and brewing. I can do that now but only with 1 fermenter.

there are a combined total of 10 inputs and outputs. One way I could do this is to use a 3 way selector switch with 10 NO blocks for each mode. That would be a total of 20 blocks and would take up quite a bit of space.

Another option is to buy 2 more terminal strips that would plug into the respective BCS ports but that seems a little clunky.

I am wondering if vga switch could be adapted for this use.

Has anyone else out there done similar?
There are lots of smart people here, lets hear some ideas.

Thanks
Scott

 

[Bsquared]

I have a BCS 460 too and am planning on something similar though I have not really done more than some planning in my head...I did pick up a DIGI 16 expansion board, that I plan to have run this 8 Channel board controlling 12v 3 way solinid valves in a cooling loop controlling flow around a cooling jacket, and SSR's controlling heaters/pumps. I'm still in the planing phase, and need to figure out if my idea for a "cooling jacket" around my conicals is feasible. If not I'm going to save my pennies and get jacketed fermenters...lots of pennies.....

 

[scott06903]

re cooling your conicals, are they plastic or ss? if plastic use a ss coil in the center. if they are plastic there are a few options I have been looking at such as an adaptation of medical technology where a plastic bladder wraps around the conical and cold water is pumped through it. There is a company that has a pat pend (good luck on that) for such an adaptation. It is basically a plastic bladder with channels either sonically or thermally welded that force a slower flow of water from one end to another. you could probably dyi with a food saver machine



but above is OT, I would still like help on a clean solution on how to switch all in puts and outputs for a bcs 460.

Thanks

 

[Bsquared]

My conicals are Stainless, I have an immersion coil for one and it works great, but it makes me nervous that I can't be certain it is clean. I also like to do a CIP cycle with the conicals, and with the immersion chiller in there I'm afraid its not doing quite as good as a job as Im expecting it to do.

My first idea is to take several 1/2" copper 8" lengths and connect them in series with rubber hose, then line them up on the conical like so ( l_l¯l_l¯l...) and use a neoprene wrap to hold them against the conical. If that does not work well, I might just go the pelletier route.

Keep us posted on what you figure out to expand your BCS.

 

[PLOVE]

I too will eventually come up with a decent method for switching inputs/outputs on a 460. In the meantime, I've employed to steps that allow me to cleanly switch back and forth between brewing and fermentation/serving temp control.

1) I have separate sys.cfg files. One is for brewing, one for fermenting. I actually did this out of necessity because I had two sets of thermoprobes with different coefficients, but it also fixes the issue of where the name of a specific input or output can only be like 16 characters long. When I load the brew.cfg I get inputs such as temp HLT, BK, MT, etc.; for fermenter.cf, I get top chamber wort temp, air temp; bottom chamber wort temp, air temp, etc.

2. For my temp probe inputs and a couple of Douts I added a second set of wires. In otherwords, the pinouts on the back of the BCS for the temp probes/ Douts have two different wires connected to them. One wire stays inside my control box and monitors probes and control outputs for my brewery, the others go to a Cat5 receptacle that I run out to my ferments.

The cool thing is, as long as I only connect one thermoprobe to the BCS input, it doesn't matter where it comes from (brewery or fermenter). Of course if two probes are feeding the input, you've put two 10kohm resistors in parallel (I think), and the temp value is cut in half. This is obviously bad.

For now this works, but as I said I'm definitely looking for a more hard-wired solution.

P

 

[scott06903]

Well I think I will use something like these spdp switches, one for each output. for the inputs I think I will just get another set of xlr inputs and have only 1 connected at a time.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0094G851C/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[PLOVE]

I am wondering if vga switch could be adapted for this use.

I really like this idea. What I don't know is how many of the pins are live. For VGA, only 7 pins plus ground seem to be in use. The grounds also appear to be coupled. This might be fine, considering you'd need to ground each external device, but it's also a waste pins that could be used for other things.

Does anyone know if a VGA switch box flip/flops every pin, as opposed to just the 7 pins for VGA? Is there another switch box that uses these pinouts and switches every pin?

 

[scott06903]

1) I have separate sys.cfg files. One is for brewing, one for fermenting. I actually did this out of necessity because I had two sets of thermoprobes with different coefficients, but it also fixes the issue of where the name of a specific input or output can only be like 16 characters long. When I load the brew.cfg I get inputs such as temp HLT, BK, MT, etc.; for fermenter.cf, I get top chamber wort temp, air temp; bottom chamber wort temp, air temp, etc.

P

P can you explain the above toggling sys.cfg files? I.e how do you create the file specific to brewing and another for fermenting? what screen are these files created?
Are they stored on the BCS?
I see on the system setting tab : Configuration File Save/Restore....but not an option to create the file, just to choose file (don't know where original file is)and the other option is to load but again I dont knnow where these files are saved.

thanks

 

[PLOVE]

If you choose to save the settings file, you can save it anywhere and give it whatever name you choose. The sys file contains naming for douts, dins, and temp probes as well as temp probe variables. So I create one settings file named fermenters and another named brewery. The brewery file names probes as MT, HLT,BK for example. You could also do the same thing for processes if you needed to, but 8 covered my needs. Hope this helps clarify.
P


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