Fresh hacks every day
[The Cheap Vegetable Gardener] assembled his first grow controller about three and a half years ago. He's been very happy with it and knows that he'll be using it for years, maybe even decades to come. He just finished overhauling the grow controller design to help make sure he doesn't burn down his garage one day. You have to admit, without knowing anything about the project this rendition does … [Read more...]
This breadboarded circuit is [Sergio's] solution to controlling appliances wirelessly. Specifically he wanted a way to turn his pool pump on and off from inside the house. Since he had most of the parts on hand he decided to build a solution himself. What he ended up with is an RF base station that can learn to take commands from different remote devices. The main components include the solid … [Read more...]
To put on a live pyrotechnic show at a music festival, [Chris] built the FireHero 3. The result is remotely controlled flames shooting up to 100 feet in the air. The system is controlled by a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino. A server runs on the Pi and allows a remote computer to control the system. The Pi sends commands over serial to the Arduino, which switches solid state relays that actuate the … [Read more...]
We like our nice, safe, 5V prototyping projects where the only thing that might get fried is a chip. But there are times when you want to switch appliances for one reason or another and then you're going to want a mains rated relay. [Viktor] got tired of having exposed high voltage on the bench during the prototyping stage of these projects so he recently built a solid state relay test box. The … [Read more...]
[Matt] wanted to have more control over his meat smoker so he built this advanced PID smoker controller. It uses the solid state relay seen in the bottom-right of this image to switch the smoker's heating element. But all of the other goodies that are included add several features not usually found in these builds. This is a replacement for the commercial PID unit he used on the original build. … [Read more...]
[Ryan] and the roomies decided that a hot tub was just what they needed to spice up the place. They hit Craig's List and found one for the right price. After acquisition and setup they were pleased to find that the jets and pump worked great. But you're not going to want to stick as much as your big toe into this ice-cold cryogenics experiment. Some poking around in the control system exposed … [Read more...]
[Michael] got his hands on a refrigerator that he intended to store beer in but found that it ran constantly. Instead of buying a new thermostat he and his friend [Doug] set out to build an Arduino-based controller for the fridge. The finished project will switch 240v so they've used a transformer to power the logic circuitry and a solid state relay to handle the load switching, with a Dallas … [Read more...]
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