Temperature Controller

I've decided to take my first step into publishing the projects that I work on. I'm not sure what would comprise the perfect forum for sharing my tinkerings, but I think this might be a start.

My first really interesting project is a temperature control unit that originally was destined to control my Alton Brown-inspired ceramic electric smoker (unofficial instructions). When following the original directions, the temp control knob is buried way down in the unit and is prone to failure (not to mention burnt hands during adjustment). My second iteration moved the control knob off the electric heating element in the bottom of the smoker and put it on the wall, half of the way up the flower pot, and that worked well until the smoke and heat caused the contacts on the bi-metalic "thermostat" switch to start to die. I decided that there had to be a better way.

Somewhere along the lines I had picked up a packet of 3 K-Type thermocouples (produce a very small voltage based on the difference in temperature between the two ends of the wire pairs) that had been used in some sort of thermodynamics lab. After a lot of tinkering, and embedded controlling a first generation was born and the fruits of my labor are shown at left.

However, being the consummate tinkerer, I couldn't handle stopping there. A writeup of the next version will likely take the form of an instructable; however, a draft currently resides on my picasa page if you're interested (link).