Cooking For Engineers

[JavaBen]

I wanted to say I've added a post in this site under 'Experiment' that deals with Arduino, Thermocouple, and low temperature cooking.

[JavaBen]

Well, a lot of time has gone by since the original post, but I'm still getting responses to it, so thought I'd update it!

Unusual to be posting a project build to a cooking forum ;-) but this is for engineers!

I built a recent project to control the gas heater on my porch, which uses a millivolt solenoid to control the gas via a simple on/off switch. I know, I know, what's this got to do with cooking...other than gas (sorry - bad, bad pun intended). Well, this was built using an Arduino as the controller, while retaining all of the heater-built-in safety features.

The first build replaced the simple on off switch with a timer that cycled and was adjustable. My thinking being, this is a drafty porch so a timer may work better than a temperature sensor.

Wrong. It worked fine, but not as well as hoped.

So the 2nd build used a thermocouple for temperature sensor. It built on the first project, incorporating the project box (a cigar box). And this worked great!

But then, sitting on the porch, thinking about how nice it was to be sitting out, in what feels like the middle of nature on my heated porch, smoking a cigar (project boxes have to come from somewhere!), I got to thinking about what it would take to turn this project into a Sous Vide controller.

Why, almost nothing! I needed a way to view the temperature setpoint, needed a way to safely control 120 vac switching....and that was about it!

So here's a link to that project: http://bbqandbanjos.blogspot.com/2012/02/banjos-sous-vide-controller-arduino.html

It makes use of a crock-pot for the vessel to hold the water-bath. I'm suggesting the use of something like this as nothing has to be changed, all of the consumer safety features are untouched and left intact - it just plugs into a controllable power source!

[Dilbert]

heehee - all good things take time!

I have so many 'gadgets' I'd get tossed if a sous vide setup appeared - but I like the temp control on/off approach on a slow cooker.

have you found any need in that small a volume for the "circulation" bit?

[JavaBen]

Dilbert,

I've been wondering when you would show up! Thankfully, it's not too late.

No, on something this small, I don't tend to see a lot of stratification. Nor burfacation. Not even any gasification.

So I think we are good to go.