More heating elements than temp probes, how to control

[mateomtb]

My system is a three vessel (keggle) eherms with 2 elements in the boil kettle and 2 in the hlt which can all be run at the same time. Here is how I set things up the first run which I think will explain my question. During the mash I used my hlt probe and hlt-element1 to control the strike heating and to maintain my mash temp with the PID setting. I quickly figured out I couldn't control the second hlt element the same way because it doesn't have a probe associated with it. So I manually turned on the second element to "turbo" heat until I came close to the automated temp then turned it off as it's not needed to maintain temps (same case with boiling). This worked well but it heats so fast it requires a lot of attention and I could easily overshoot turning my back for just a minute.

So what I'm trying to figure out is the best approach to automate the second elements without having the probe associated to tell them when to turn off. I'm not sure what condition I can use without that temp input available?

Thanks for any suggestions

mateo

[JonW]

You can drive both SSR's from one output so that they turn on simultaneously and are tied to the single temp probe. Any specific reason you didn't do it this way?

[mateomtb]

Oh crap, I was always thinking of every element on it's own out not realizing how the temps were tied to them. I wasn't thinking about each vessel as an out. Forgive me for talking this out.

So if I'm using 3 way switches for each element (BCS - OFF - MANUAL) I can take out0 to the BCS side of 2 of the element switches and still be able to control OFF or MANUAL as necessary. Assuming 2 switches are in BCS mode, the PID mode for out0 will then turn on and off both SSR's as necessary just like it was one output, it won't know the difference as it's just trying to maintain whatever temp condition I have set.