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The DS1820 controller is a Universal Serial Bus (USB) device manufactured by J-Works in California. It has the following features:
I ordered the unit from J-Works, and had them send some DS1820 devices as well, they are easily wired using telephone jacks and telephone cord. This unit will allow me to detect the temperature in the Hot Liquor Tank, on the input side of the RIMS unit, on the output side of the RIMS unit, inside my chest freezer for lager fermenting and inside the chest freezer for lagering. The main reason for using this unit was simplicity for me, I do know some electronics, but not well enough to build this type of thing from scratch. I had found web sites on how to interface the DS1820 with the Parallax BASIC Stamp (used by CD Pritchard, though he uses basic thermistors rather than the Digital Thermometer DS1820), but I figured by the time I had fried several units, to but to buy the whole thing for less than $90, it seemed worth it. The biggest advantage for this unit, was its Visual Basic DLL component, that I could build into my own custom Visual Basic interface. See the Software section for more details on this! The biggest disadvantage to this, is the digital thermometer itself! The DS1820 has a 0.75 second response time! So, rapid, realtime evaluation of the heating of the wort and mash is virutally impossible. Plus, being device dependant, it "locks" input from the keyboard & mouse whilst it is obtaining the temperature from the device. Though this is annoying, its not fatal. When I found that my RIMS Heater has a heating rate of 1.7 degrees per minute, I calculated that if I sampled temperatures every five seconds, it would be amply accurate for mashing.
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McKenzie Brewing is operated by John Fraser, this site should be used as a reference only! Electricity and water do not mix well and may take your life. Use at your own risk! Visitors as of 9th July 2009
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