Solenoid Valves

[brewmastershake]

Would these be appropriate to use with the BCS? They are by far the cheapest controllable stainless valves that I've found.

http://breweryparts.com/index.php/equip ... alves.html

[gbrewer]

Those look pretty cool. You could get them to work easy enough. They are 24 volt so you will need to get a transformer. I have been look for something very similar.

[jpold]

So, if I get a 24 volt DV (or 12 volt) solenoid valve like this to control flow out of my mash tun, how do I power it from the ECC controller? The only way I can see is going from the 5 VOLT Out on the controller to a solid state relay controlling an AC line with a socket, then I could plug a DC transformer into that socket. But that seems kind of complicated. Is there an easier way to do this?

[JonW]

You want to use a low voltage relay board to drive the solenoids. The 5V output drives a relay which you can then wire up 12V or 24V accessories. To keep things simple, you want to standardize on either 12V or 24V accessories and get a relay board and power supply that uses the same voltage.

Keep in mind, the relay voltage is different than the BCS output voltage. What this means is that you need a relay board that is compatible with logic level (5V) outputs. On Ebay, you'd want to search for ones that say AVR, PIC, 8051, etc. since those are compatible with the microprocessor outputs. Here is an example of a 12V relay board that I use on my system: http://cgi.ebay.com/Eight-8-Relay-Modul ... 0609010929 (For future reference, if the link above is dead, search Ebay for "12V RELAY BOARD PIC". This particular board if from "Electronics Salon".

[jpold]

Thanks!