This is the second part of the Anodizing Controller I made. The heart of the controller is the Esquilo Air.
It is a great micro-controller board with lots of built in hardware and software. It has made making this much easier than using an Arduino. It uses the Squirrel Programming Language.
Here is a Fritzing Layout of how things are connected.
I’m new to using Fritzing so I’m going to work on a better Diagram. I had to build several custom parts for it which was a big thing to learn too.
I’m only showing two temperature sensors but actually have 8 I think. They all attach the same way. The 10k pot is to adjust for the increase of sensors. A 4.7k resister comes with the temperature sensor from Adafruit. I first put an ohm meter on the pot to see what direction was making the pot go high and low then set it for 4.7k which was the starting point. As I added sensors I would lower the pot a tiny bit at a time till it could see all sensors. Next time I get in side I’ll measure the ohms to see where it is now.
Because of so many sensors I added a 7805 voltage regulator to provide power as I didn’t want to put a strain on the Esquilo. I don’t know how much the sensors take but I though be safe than sorry and it also worked better when I soldered it to the Adafruit quarter size Perma-Proto breadboard.
The Green Button is an On/Off switch and the Blue and Red are Momentary Push Buttons. The Led for the green is lit when the button is on showing power. I had intended for the Blue and Red Leds on those buttons, Red for something critical and blue for something else but ended up just using the blue which I turn on and off during the loop so I know the program was still running. Had some problems in the beginning and just left it that way for an indicator.
Due to memory space I currently have the LCD Disabled in Code so It’s up to you if you want to use it. The code is there though I didn’t do such a good job coding the buttons so they are a bit slow and sometimes have to press them twice. I believe I saw kind of a software interrupt that would probably work better than the current code for the buttons. I may go back and change that.
Here is a Fritzing Schematic too. Need to figure out to to get a better picture.
Also, here is the Fritzing File to download.
AnodizingController.fzz (240.88 kb)
The following pictures Don’t show the Mosfet controller board connections.
Pictures of the enclosure.
Picture of LCD on Lid.
One of the Pushbuttons.
In the next part I should have pictures of the Mosfet Controller board connections and how I built the heaters and possibly the code. The code needs some clean up.
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