DIY Lab Equipment with Arduino-Part 2-Temperature Control

This is the second course in the DIY Lab Equipment with Arduino series. After we learned the basics in the first course, now we APPLY the knowledge to measure and control the temperature for our experiment setup or project. Temperature is essential in almost any experiment and it is important to record it continuously. This is why we directly employed an SD card module to save the records so that we can retrieve them and put them in Excel for example. We also included how to send the data to Google Sheets so that online monitoring can be done anywhere. We also added an OLED display to show the measurements so that the system can be used easily independently from the computer.

After learning about temperature measurement, we moved to explain different ways of heating and cooling. We made a complete setup to measure the temperature and use it to control the heating and cooling of water as an example of an experimental setup. We employed PWM to precisely control the temperature. A similar setup can be applied in different ways to fit our experiment. Like other courses, we use off-shelf components that are readily available at low cost.

During this course, we practice how to utilize available codes from the internet or library examples and fit them into our project with minimal coding experience. If you have no knowledge about coding and Arduino, it is highly advised to take the first course (DIY Lab Equipment with Arduino-Part 1-The basics).

In the next course, we will learn about liquid handling which includes the properties and use of different pumps and how to make your own pump to use to control liquid transfer.