Developing A Beer Fridge Controller

The project utilizes an Arduino in a beer fridge controller in order to control a compressor, log the temperature, and monitor the operation using Arduino Ethernet Shield through web interface.

An existing beer fridge controller was modified by adding an Arduino to it. It was used to log the temperature and compressor state over the network. This can be used to make calculations about the thermal mass of the contents of the fridge which will result to determining how much beer is actually in the fridge at any given time. More 1-wire temperature sensors were used since the controller also support more than one temperature probe.

With the addition of the Arduino, software changes are not really an issue aside from changing the pin that the compressor runs on. The Arduino and Ethernet shield are mounted onto the PCB along with a black rectangle 240V capable relay. Behind the relay is a 240V transformer where all electronics on the board are being powered. The Arduino will not be need at all in the final PCB but only the ATmega328 from the Arduino and the Ethernet shield. The hardware and software handles more probes.

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