A look back at the Heatermeter build from a beginner(2011)

[John Bostwick]

I thought I would post some of the pics I had of my first heatermeter I built in 2011. This was my first electronic project and it took many months to finally get a working controller, and many ruined Linksys routers( about 9, I think). Bryan and Ed answered tons of questions from me and without their help I would have been totally lost with getting the heatermeter made.

Adding a SD card to the router-this was by far, the hardest part for me. sometimes it worked and sometimes it did not

You needed a Button board

The HM, still being populated

Im not certain, but I would have to say this is one of the first attempts of a printed circuit board, It would probably have worked fine except the Schematic online at the time, had a fault(missing component). Oh, and this was my first ever printed homemade circuit board( injet transparency film and a Presensitized PCB board and a bright) light

This was done using a laser printer, a magazine page, and some chemicals

I went back to using wire connection board that I had already made and I fixed it and added the missing component(I can't remember what component was missing, I believe it was something with the LCD though) and as you can see its working although you cant see anything on the LCD.

And the router and HM all nicely going into the very large case. lol

The finished HM, I still use the same blower on my UDS.

After version 3 came out, all the hard work of making your own circuit boards went away with OSH Park printed boards
I would post a picture, But I guess there is a 10 picture limit, lol.

A BIG THANKS goes to Bryan and the Virtual Weber forums for teaching me a lot over the last 3, almost 4 years of HM joy. Who would think a hobby of Smoking and BBQing would get you to learn how to solder and how make your own PCB's and everything else like 3d printing, programming, ect.....

Thanks Bryan

 

[KellyMc]

We kids today don't know how good we have it!

 

[John Bostwick]

We kids today don't know how good we have it!

Lol, yeah. A lot has changed in a just a few years. I love my HM, Its so easy to make now. But, boy did I destoy a lot of good Linksys routers lol. I guess the now I have a lot of wallwarts for new HM's

 

[Joel Peterson]

This is excellent. I want to see more, post another with the next version of work!

 

[John Bostwick]

This is excellent. I want to see more, post another with the next version of work!

Well I don't have much more pictures, but I do have a few


I was able to find a case at Fry's that worked well. Bryan was able to fit everything into the case of a Linksys, but I could never get my board small enough and I could never figure out how in the world was he able to get all the wires to fit. The added benefit of a bigger case was a bigger lcd display. I am not sure why the display has 2115, lol

Here is what a premade PCB did to the HM. I believe that one is version 3, the small one, lol. It still needed a Linksys router and I was finally able to fit the HM into a Linksys router case. My first HM had its quirks, but it worked great for a couple summers. I still have a few of the ver.3 boards laying around already made, not to sure what to do with them though.

I went back to making homemade PCB for the button board. These little boards were really easy to make using a laser printer, iron, and magazine page. You just had to make the layout on the computer, print it on any old page from a magazine and iron it onto a blank pcb board. etchant will remove everything not covered and you have a basic pcb board ready to be drilled and soldered.

and the finish product

That's about all the pictures I have of my build history. It has been fun over the years. I still need to make the new version, I think I will wait a bit until some of the kinks are figured out.