Archive for the ‘Showcase’ Category

PID Library makes it into (another) successful kickstarter [PID Showcase]

Wednesday, July 4th, 2012

You may remember the espresso machine that was on kickstarter earlier this year. You know, where they asked for $20k and got $369k instead?

Well it looks like the PID Library has made it on to another wild Kickstarter ride. This time it’s with the Nomiku: an ingenious sous-vide solution. I’m a sucker for forehead-smack ideas, and this product is a great one. Rather than sell you an entire bulky unit, the Nomiku a small, easy to store, device that clips to a pot you already have.

The icing on the cake is that I know these guys. I met them at makerfaire last year and they’re great; very passionate about this stuff. Actually, it seemed like they were just passionate. about everything. I’m really glad that this is working out for them!

This is what I love about working on base-level components. I only have to do the work once, and then I get to see it crop up in tons of cool stuff. It makes me proud to know I helped those people along a little. I can only imagine how the Arduino team feels.

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PID-Controlled Espresso Machine [PID Showcase]

Monday, January 16th, 2012

It is to my great delight that I can confirm that this Kick-ass, Kickstarting, Open Source Espresso Machine is using the Arduino PID Library.

They seem to be using a stand-alone commercial pid controller for at least some of the control. Perhaps this could be replaced with an osPID for a 100% open experience?

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Sousvide-O-Mator [PID Showcase]

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

Sous-vide BabyTop

There have been many sous vide projects floating around the tubes recently. The one I’m showcasing here was first brought to my attention by the Adafruit blog. I found out from the developer that he was in the midst of a full write-up, so I held off on posting. Now that the write-up is done, we can see that he’s put together an impressive little project.

Great documentation, excellent implementation of the PID Library, delicious, delicious meat? What’s not to love? I’m also looking forward to subsequent posts, where he promises to show “how to calibrate the beast :)”

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Reflow Oven Shield [PID Showcase]

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

The reason I created the PID library was to make it easier for people to integrate PID control into their projects. Surprisingly, it’s actually happening! I’m starting to see a lot of really cool implementations out there. As a result, I’ve decided to start a new category of post: the PID Showcase. These are projects that make me feel that all that work was worth it.

So… here’s the first one: the Reflow Oven Controller Shield from RocketScream.com
Reflow Oven Sheild

It integrates all the components necessary to turn a toaster oven into a reflow oven. Thermocouple Chip… LCD… buzzer… awesome. But the part that I love is how they completely owned the PID part of this project. Look at this reflow curve:

reflow

They made use of setpoint ramping to get the heating rates just right. The output is phenomenal. This came out of a toaster oven:

wow

Excellent work!

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