parts

For the last couple months ups has been a frequent visitor to my house. 

These parts are from Brian at dudadiesel some manual 1/2" ball valves, a 30 plate chiller and the 1/2" electric solenoid valves that will be controlled by the software.

This will be my HLT a old keg i had laying around. I cut the top off and polished it with my angle grinder. The hole seen  is for the drain pickup and there is another on the side for the heating element.

Quick disconnect fittings for hoses from bargain fittings.

updates

Its been a while so i wanted to post some updates on the build. The last couple months I've been slowing gathering parts, and trying to work on the build in any spare time i could find which wasn't much between full time classes and 35hrs a week at work. However the extra hours at work are helping the hurt I've been putting on my poor credit card

As for the current status of the build everything is ready to go except for my HEX coil. I ordered the 316 50' 1/2 ss tubing from nybrewsupply which came in 24" diameter thinking i had someone to coil it tighter for me but that fell through. So after researching and attempting every hand coiling method i could find i was still only able to get it to 16" after that it just starting kinking and now its pretty much scrap. Presentation day is this wednesday so i don't have time to order another so it looks like i'm gonna sacrafice my copper ic it's only 3/8" though so i might head to hd tonight and get some 1/2" copper and try my luck at that first.

I'll get some pics up later today of the progress

DAQ Factory

New plan: DAQFactory.  So I decided to ditch LabView for now.  After playing with both programs for a while I decided that DAQFactory might be a better choice to control the brewery.  The interface is very simple to use and all inputs and outputs are assigned to "channels" which are well organized and easy to call in functions. There is a lot more code writing however, but although its been a while since my one computer science class, its coming back to me pretty quickly. Most code is broken down into "sequences" which also helps keep things organized.  The user interface is easy to work with. It is built with simple components that can reference the channels and control sequences. DAQFactory also works great with LabJack which is the data acquisition device that i will be using to connect the computer to the inputs and outputs of the brewery.  I've made a lot of progress with the software in the last couple days and have built a rough draft of the brewing program. Currently all inputs and outputs are simulated signals. The code seems to be working alright and is correctly stepping through the mash process with the simulated inputs. I still have many features to add and bugs to work out and a few changes will need to be made once the actual inputs are ready but i wrote the code in a way that should make the switch pretty simple.  Here's a sneak peak screenshot of the half finished user interface.