Is there a sensor for PH or other characteristics of a liquid? (winemaking)

I live in California, where wine is a USD$2 billion per year industry. A friend is a winemaker. Winemakers like to know the temperature, PH, and BRIX (sugar concentration) of their grape juice while it is fermenting as this tells them when to take action, like stopping fermentaiton. To get this information, they have to drive to the tanks which are often far away from home. So they don’t do this as often as they might, and don’t have the data they could to apply the most scientific method to their product.

Are there any fez-compatible sensors for PH or (esoteric, I know) sugar concentrations or other liquid characteristics?

Thanks.

Something like this maybe?

pH makes me think of LabQuest, which we used in high school physics class. It looks like it’s come a long way, but they do have a PH sensor which appears to have a linear voltage output… for 80 bucks :slight_smile:

I’m sure a Brix sensor is going to be harder to find, Googling came up with a couple results but they are all in-line sensors, for big money of course.

another “compatible” industry that uses “wet” sensors that you might also explore is the home hobbyist aquarium, they often have temp and pH measurement in their systems

Aquarium sensors are a very interesting idea. They only worry is that you need to be very careful at what type of environment a sensor is designed for. Their temperature range as well as what types of liquids they are designed to be compatible with are important considerations.

Most hobbyist aquariums are not equipped with PH, uS and KH sensors.
Reason: they are way too expensive at the moment. (especially uS)

It’s much cheaper to buy a test strip package or test liquid package.

However there are some low budget ph sensors around. However, you should consider if you would like to hook up such a thing to a barrel of whine?

I would not.

If you read this article… a pH sensor is nothing more than the electrodes of a battery
[url]http://www.emesystems.com/OL2ph.htm[/url]

It may help you

Cheers Ian

Thanks everyone. I figured temp and ph would be easy, BRIX harder. We would need to find either a refractometer or a hydrometer or both that could go through a serial port or RS-485. We have much experience with the .Net MF and RS-485 transceivers for 2-wire RS485 which we like a lot. Refractometers are typically used before fermentation, and hydrometers to measure the liquid density are used after fermentation.

Apparently people get passionate about wine, and computing!