kegduino

Arduino Kegerator Controller

What is it

This is code to control a kegerator with an arduino touch screen. Simply press the button and beer flows.

What else is needed

• A solenoid (1/4" NPT Electric Solenoid Valve 12-Volt DC - BBTF-CD-12VDC or similar)
• L shaped hose barbs (2 HHO 3/8" NPT x 1/4")
• 1N4004 - 400V 1A Diode
• TIP120 Transistor
• 12V 0.5A DC Cord
• 12V to 5V regulator
• A Flow Meter
• DHT11 Temperature Sensor
• Arduino Uno R3
• 2.8" Resistive TouchScreen
• A micro sd card. Any card.

Setup (in a nutshell)

A lot of assembly required. Follow my tutorial for specifics.

• Set up the 12V to 5v Step Down
• Connect the output from the 5V step down to the Vin on the arduino
• Connect the solenoid - This basically acts as a gate. Input allows flow through the 12V line to turn the solenoid on/off.

  Facing: the left prong of the transistor goes through a 10K resistor to the Digital 2 pin on the arduino The middle pin connects straight to the - side of the Solenoid. The middle pin also connects from 1N4004 diode into the +12V line (striped side in the +12V). The right pin on the transistor goes to ground The + side of the solenoid goes directly into +12V line.

• Connect the flow meter. Yellow goes to Arduino Digital 3, red to +5v, black to common ground.
• Connect the temperature sensor. +5v into pin 1. Analog 4 from the arduino goes into pin 2. +5v through a 10K resistor also goes into pin 2. Pin 3 unused. Pin 4 to common ground.
• Ground the arduino
• Put data.txt on the sd card that contains (note that {numberofounces} should be an integer that represents how much beer is in the keg at the time of setup and {nameofbeer} is the string name you want to display for the beer). Note2: Do not use the {}'s. Those are there to see, don't use them! See sdcard/data.txt as an example!

  {numberofounces}\n {nameofbeer}

• Put beer.bmp on the sd card
• Upload this file to the arduino
• Get the Adafruit GFX library
• Get the Adafruit TFTLCD library
• Get the Adafruit TouchScreen library
• Change NUMSAMPLES to 3 in libraries/TouchScreen/TouchScreen.cpp! (This makes the touch screen refresh to a median value, meaning that on each refresh it will not try to detect a new press, but continue to realize a hold)
• If you did everything right, congrats!

Thanks

Thanks go to Jenna Roberts for the image.