My father in law loves to tinker with electronics (all self taught, he's a tailor by trade), and he's decided he wants to build me a thermostat. He's been working on it for a while and today he dropped of pieces for me to play with while he works on the next part.
At the moment, it's not a thermostat, but a really sophisticated thermometer.
Using a micro computer that he built from a kit, a board that he has wired and a program he wrote, I can now tell the temperature of 10 separate tanks to 0.1 of a degree. The temps are calculated every second, so it's not like those cheap ones that take a couple of minutes to get the right temp.
Here is the board and probes
It's controlled by keyboard and all data is display on a screen.
Once all is complete, it will monitor and control 10 separate tanks simultaneously and will change the temp according to what time it is. e.g. drop the temp at night. Changing the set temps is a 5 second job. Can't wait for the relays so we can give it a full test. So far, it's still a lot cheaper than a single thermostat.
If this works as good as we think it will, we are considering making more to sell.
Cheers JD
At the moment, it's not a thermostat, but a really sophisticated thermometer.
Using a micro computer that he built from a kit, a board that he has wired and a program he wrote, I can now tell the temperature of 10 separate tanks to 0.1 of a degree. The temps are calculated every second, so it's not like those cheap ones that take a couple of minutes to get the right temp.
Here is the board and probes
It's controlled by keyboard and all data is display on a screen.
Once all is complete, it will monitor and control 10 separate tanks simultaneously and will change the temp according to what time it is. e.g. drop the temp at night. Changing the set temps is a 5 second job. Can't wait for the relays so we can give it a full test. So far, it's still a lot cheaper than a single thermostat.
If this works as good as we think it will, we are considering making more to sell.
Cheers JD