Wire options

[riverswillbeer]

When wiring a LONG.... or short run for that matter, can we use common telephone wire? Thanks for any info.

[JonW]

What are you wiring? Temp probes? I would use twisted pair for better noise immunity. Also don't run parallel to power lines or near light fixtures.

[brewstarke]

Jon- How do you recommend making the connections with the twisted pair for temp probes? Do you suggest having one of the twisted pairs feed the signal and the other of the pair the ground? Or sending the signal on one set of pairs and the ground on another (not sure I'm making sense here)?
I'm picking up some strange interference with a some wire I made up by twisting the signal and grounds together and wrapping it shielding material. Wondering if I should have separated the signal and the grounds...

[JonW]

It should work fine either way. Do you have a jumper installed from the BCS ground to an earth ground (AC ground)? Without it, extending the probe wiring will amplify erroroneous signals and you'll see a bunch of spikes in the graphs.

[brewstarke]

Yeah, I got the jumper which definitely helped flatten out the wild spikes. I think it's my AC line to my fermentation heater that is running along side the temp probes. I get a weird jump in one temp probe and a drop in another right about the same time as my heater kicking on. It's minor so I'm not sweating it too much.
Thanks for the input--