I had posted this in some of my homebrewing FB groups, and Taplist commented they wanted me to share this in the forum, so here goes:
I wanted a way to know how much beer is left in my kegs without having to lift the keg and simply guess.
Enter the BrU.F.O. This works similar to a PLAATO as it gives accurate real-time weight of the keg. Unlike the PLAATO that reports to an app on your phone, the BrU.F.O. reports to a touch screen display that will go on the front of my Keezer that works similar to Taplist, but will also give me the quantities remaining. It can output weight in grams, fl. oz, lb, or estimated “Pints Remaining” or percentages. The keg images reflect how much liquid is remaining. The controller houses a touch screen, custom PCB and an Arduino to handle the logic.
These sensors are accurate to +/- 0.05% which is 0.0005oz or 0.008 of a pint, so pretty damn accurate. To accomodate for thermal resistance drop, it utilizes special wiring and resistors that aren’t temperature-sensitive. If electronics become too cold, they become a “superconductor” which results in zero resistance - this could be a very bad thing.
I am also able to build 4 scales with the touch screen display for around the price of a single PLAATO scale.
Bonus: you can also use it give the weight of your Co2 tank. I am going to be updating it eventually to work with a digital pressure regulator that will give a value on the display so that would be one less scale I need to build.
I don’t plan to mass-produce these or anything, I just like to tinker. Nothing against PLAATO, they have a great product but I wanted to make my own, and add a little more on the functionality side.
The plan is to possibly integrate it with taplist for more ease-of-use. But after designing all this and building, I’ll probably be too lazy lol.