Home brew Controller


 
T

Tony Lampher

TVWBB Fan
Well my homebrew project is coming along nicely. here are a list of the basics
1. I loaded control software on my laptop used to control the environment in a chicken barn.
2. Took 2 circuit boards from a chicken barn and modified the one to convert the RTD I found into a 0-5V signal.
3. modified the second board to control a fan and a fire alarm horn/strobe. It also has an analog input which I read the RTD with.
4. Wrote a file in which the software communicates to the board using the serial port on my laptop and converted the 485 to 232 at my serial port.
5. Made some slight modifications to the software to accomodate the higher temperature range required for controlling the smoker vs the chicken barn. Also changed the picture file so it display a picture of a WSM!
6. It is still jsut a pile of boards and wires, but will fit it all into a nice little box.

The only thing I need to do is figure out the best way to get the air from my box into the WSM.
 
Here is a pic of the mess I made for a test!

home.php
 
The basics are just as described above. It would be a very tough project to complete as a do it your selfer because the main circuit board that communicates to the PC has a processor that needs to be programmed in order to setup it up for modbus and to set the proper cahannels for digital outputs and analog inputs. The smaller board I built is custom to the particular RTD sensor I found, the resistor values will differ for each RTD sensor depeding on the range of the sensor and type such as 100 ohm RTD. As for the software it is software used for controlling a layer chickn barn facility which supports up to 50 chicken barns from one pc. The software also requires a serial port on the pc which a standard computer you buy from like best buy probably doesn't have a serial port. If seriously interested in doing this I can easily help you out and could help support it for you, but I'm not sure if you want to tackle something like this. I could also figure out what the cost of the boards, sensor, and serial 232/485 converter cost. Then build and program the boards for you. You would just need to provide a fan, power supply and then wire and and mount the boards in an enclosure. I could email you the software, but would probably need to get into your computer remotely to get it completely running for you.
 
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