Adding Fluke 54 II features to a 51 II thermometer

The difference between Fluke’s 54 II and 51 II thermometers is the addition of a second channel for dual temperature sensing, and buttons which control data logging. Oh, and an additional $150 in price for the higher model. [TiN] was poking around inside and with the help of some forum members he figured out how to unlock additional features on Read the rest

Keep all eyes on your kegerator with this light up gauge cluster

kegerator_gauge_cluster

A few years back [Evan] built a kegerator from a mini fridge and was quite happy with his new beer chiller. Like many of us do, he started thinking up ways in which he could improve the project as soon as it was completed. While it took a couple of years, he recently got around to adding the temperature and Read the rest

Electronic bird house monitoring goes a few steps further

[Stephen Albers] offers his avian friends a lot of extras with this electronically monitored bird house. This will not only give you a look at what’s going on inside, but provide a source for several other bits of data as well.

First off, a camera has been mounted to the underside of the roof. This looks down on the … Read the rest

Refurbishing a refrigerator for fermenting

[Mikey Sklar] wrote in to show us how he refurbished a neighbors useless refrigerator as a fermentation chamber. [Mikey] is a fan of making breads, kemchi, yogurt, and tempeh. To make these, it helps to have a completely controlled temperature for them to ferment in. [Mikey] developed a temp controller for this in the past, but had to either … Read the rest

Bluetooth temperature module

Wanting to know the outside temperature, [Jamie Maloway] built his own temperature sensor that can be read with a Bluetooth device. Let’s take a tour of the hardware above from right to left. There’s a linear voltage regulator with two filtering caps and a terminal block to attach a 9V battery or other power source. Next there’s an 8 … Read the rest

Skillet reflow controller

Using an electric skillet to reflow surface mount circuit boards is a popular alternate use for those kitchen appliances. The real trick is monitoring and controlling the temperature. [Mechatronics Guy] built his own skillet temperature controller using a thermistor, a solid state relay, and an Arduino.

He was inspired by [Ladyada's] work which used a servo to adjust the temperature Read the rest

In-button display for your car’s dashboard

OLED display in a dashboard button

Here’s an interesting take on augmenting a car’s dashboard. [Daniel] is using a button blank to house a 1″ OLED display in his Jetta. It shows auxiliary data such as boost pressure and several sets of temperature readings. The display itself has a tiny little circuit board with a PIC 24 to drive it. A larger board, seen above, … Read the rest