[Jean-Michel] tipped us off about his beer keg monitoring setup. It can tell you how much beer is left in each keg, how much carbon dioxide remains in the canister, and it can monitor and regulate temperature.
An Arduino mega is the brain of the system. A shield was built to interface force sensors, measuring the weight of the keg to estimate how much beer remains. Analog temperature sensors allow for temperature monitoring and control of the compressor for regulation. Information can be displayed on a graphic LCD or a computer via XBee wireless communications.
This is along the lines of the SparkFun kegerator but we like the added functionality. Does this need to Twitter? Probably not but if you want that, it’s only a bit of a software hack away.
I lurv the Arduino…this rocks the cock off the kegerator.
Gotta love useless statistics. Always something to watch.
not totally useless, the guy who made this is a home brewer, so knowing how much beer is left is quite important information, so your never left without your personal favorite beer
Nicely done. The CO2 monitor is a definite plus in my book. No more wondering “do I have enough Co2 to force pressurize AND serve?”
This is awesome, I would love to see a bar tweak this idea to tweet a depleting keg. Could be great for limited edition beers, casks etc… “Get in soon, only 20 pints left of XXX” – similar to the sparkfun version, but based on weight, not pours. Love the beer coverage BTW – keep up the great work.
The kegbot.org guys have something similar (Arduino keg volume and temperature monitor). I think it tweets as well.
I saw something similar used (albeit it was on a PLC) to attempt to monitor wine fermentation (home winery). Arduino would have been a much better solution.
I usually wait for the keg to float to know its empty.
Arrrrrggggduino.
Just playin. While it’s STILL an overuse of the platform, I like beer too much to legitimately complain.
please explain overuse of the platform? its there, its cheap, its easy, why not use it since its having no trouble getting the job done
This is exactly what the Arduino is meant for….he’s got a series of sensors, an LCD, and outputs to a cooling system. Plus he made his own shield for the thing. Does something have to use every pin on the chip and fill up the whole flash to be a “proper use”? Why does it even matter? What if he’d used an old laptop with a serial port connection running a C program — that would be much much worse, right?
Even a really excellent programmer would have trouble fitting all that’s going on here onto something much smaller than an ATMega. If you can do it then do so and post it here, instead of whining that people aren’t building their projects the way you like. Baby.
“(I calibrated using a frozen banana).”
Hacker points +10!
That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do! The original project page seems to have moved… is there an update, somewhere, ideally with more info on the build, schematics, etc.?