The Arduinofied Kegerator Project
Since winter is coming to Minnesota, I have more time to do inside projects. I’ve wanted a kegerator for some time. It is much easier than bottling beer, plus it’s just neat. On top of that, there are many possibilities to get geeky with it and introduce technology. I am currently in the middle of the project and close to starting the fun part of integrating Arduino.
When I first started this project I thought about building the kegerator from scratch. To do this you must get a small refrigerator and drill holes in the door. You must buy all the components separately and put it together. After adding up the cost of all the individual pieces, it was cheaper to buy an already built kegerator. I found a great deal at Costco of all places. I ended up buying the Danby 5.2 Cu. Ft. Keg Cooler. Besides the refrigerator, it came with an empty 5 lb. CO2 tank, a tower, a gas regulator, and a commercial tap. These components alone cost over $230. This kegerator was only $349.99 in the store. This seemed well worth it to me considering I didn’t have to drill a hole and worry about going through refrigerant pipes. It wasn’t all rainbows and lollipops putting it together though. The tower they shipped wasn’t the same one that was illustrated in the instructions. The one I received required it to be screwed into the refrigerator instead of snapped in. They did not ship me the correct screws either. This required me to make a couple of trips to the hardware store to get the correct screws. Other than this mishap, it was pretty easy to put together.
This kegerator is setup to work with a commercial keg. This seems a little strange to me since I am guessing most of the consumers of this kegerator are home brewers. Home brewers most often use Corney kegs. They do not have the same hookup as a commercial keg. Corney kegs are the kegs that soda venders used in the past before they went to boxed syrup. You can find many refurbished ones since soda vendors don’t use them anymore. I ended up going with a new one though because I read that the refurbished ones can cause a lot of problems. I also bought a gas disconnect and aliquid disconnect so I could attach my hoses to the new keg. Finally, something cheap. While at Midwest, I also traded in my empty CO2 tank that came with my kegerator for one that was full. I managed to get this hooked up without injuring myself. :) This was the part I was most nervous about. Now my kegerator is setup and could work as a normal kegerator, but I’m just getting started.
The majority of this project is hooking up an arduino to make this a kegerator on steroids. For this I am going to use the Kegbot open source project. With this I can monitor how much beer is left in the keg, who drank how much, and a lot of other fun data regarding the kegerator. The setup I am doing requires a web component that provides management for the system along with storing data about the users and kegs in a MySQLdatabase. It also will use an Android tablet for users to interact with the kegerator and also an Arduino with a Kegboard shield to monitor the flow of beer along with the tempreture of the keg. I can’t do the Ardunio andKegboard part yet because I am waiting for the pieces to be mailed to me. I was able to get the server up and running. My kegbot’s website ishttp://kegbot.michaelfransen.com. Getting this site up was quite a challenge. The default location of the static files was a location that did not work for my hosting provider, DigitalOcean. Also, the provided instructions were forUbuntu. Previous to this install I was using CentOS. To make things easier, I migrated from CentOS to Ubuntu. I then had to move my site and blog over as well so I don’t have to pay for two servers.
Hopefully by next weekend, I will have all the parts needed for the Kegboardso I can get busy soldering and finish this project. I have a batch of Caribou Slobber that will be ready to keg in the next 1-2 weeks.
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