Outcome

Context

For a while, I've wanted to have better temperature control for my stove in my apartment. I originally considered buying a sous vide machine, but seeing as the photon I got was cheaper (just handed to me when I took this class), I decided to see if I could do it my self. I really wanted to be able to turn on my stove from campus to start cooking things that take a long time. A good sous vide steak can take an hour or two, and if I set it up before I left, I could start turn it on just before my last class ends and arrive home to a perfectly cooked meal. Rice takes 20-30 minutes, which is about the same as my commute, so if my stove were just a bit smarter, it could have fresh rice for me when I arrive. To test this project, I tried making eggs at specific temperatures.

Process

This project started with the newest (or at least new to me,) part: the Particle Photon. Just getting it hooked up to the wifi in my apartment and connecting the thermal resistor and sevo was a project in of itself. Fortunately, the class site has some good documentation for these sensors. I have it all wired up in the photo below, except for the servo (which was still attached to my stove) and goes in pins 24-26 on the near side.

On to mounting it to the stove dial! I'm much better at foam core than I am with wires, so this was pretty quick. I held it together with rubber bands so to prevent the motor from burning out, and it's a little bit jittery, but at least it's easy to assemble and disassemble.

During the test, I added a check to see if the sensor was working (it frequently wasn't), and a slower rate of turning, which prevented some strange oscillations that I encountered.

Product

All together, I was able to create a setup that allowed me to control and monitor the stove temperature remotely. Here's a picture of my setup:

Reflection

This was, if nothing else, a good way to get to know the photon and its components, and hang out with my roommate and eat some very nice boiled eggs.

Future Work

If you decide to try making this yourself, I would recommend a few precursor projects, namely a wifi enabled smoke detector and fire extinguisher. This project would also have been improved by indicator lights for when the temperature sensor or servo disconnected, and by soldering everything together, because the breadboard had more than a few connection issues. The occasional drop of the temperature sensor is probably what was keeping it a little warmer than it should have been. You could also write a proper PID controller for the temperature, instead of a simple negative feedback loop.