KKTO + Arduino & TC4

Muscles

As if I don't already have enough on my plate I have decided to have a go at automating the KKTO.
Now, I am far from a skilled DIY'er but I have a plan and recently discovered that I have some Arduino familiar and electronically capable mates so thats a start. I've had the Arduino & LCD for a week or two and today I finally received my TC4 Shield Kit so the fun will soon begin. Soldering can't be that hard right?
I'm going to build a control box to house the Arduino and TC4 and to allow for manual control of the element and the fan in the TO. Via the PC I want to monitor, record and load roast profiles and ROR and will be trying this with both Artisan and RoastLogger.
I'll probably muck around with the Halogen version of TO as the heat does rise an drop quicker than the solid element but I've been told the halogen elements life will be greatly reduced by the constant and faster switching of power - I have no idea if this is true.

Koffee_Kosmo

Sounds like a good project I have had my own ideas on how it should be done but that involves a Turbo Oven to be built from the ground up KK

UNM

You have the arduino mega right? Don't forget the I2C pounds need to be jumpered across v to the TC4 board. I bent the aopropriate pins before soldering the pin header as it gave a tighter bend and a neater fit when all was plugged together. Will post a photo later, it is easier to follow with a picture.

Muscles

That would be great UNM, can you describe your setup and how you are using the arduino and tc4 for me?

UNM

Two pics. One of the jumper link, one of the arduino and LCD. Note the LCD adapter connector cable - needs to be right way round or it can blow the LCD. You may well have a different LCD. I decided to use Jim's LCDadapter as the extra cost of ordering that at the same time as the TC4 was minimal. Given the number of pins on the Mega, and extra code space, a generic LCD should also work, just may need another library added. The crappy LCD I initially ordered had a link to a REALLY old LCD library - the current one I got off the net works and is much easier to code with. The jumper takes pins SDA and SCL from the mega to pins marked AN4 and AN5 on the TC4 shield. These are for I2C signals and just come out on different pins on the Mega. When soldering that pin header, I bent pins AN4 and AN5 90 degrees before soldering - made a good tight bend and everything fits nicely. Mine is really simple right now - two thermocouples to the roaster. Control is still manual and separate to the arduino. Arduino power comes either from a 12VDC battery, or from the USB interface if on the laptop. I am still using aBourbon on the Arduino and pBourbon on the laptop (under Processing 1.2.1). As these were also written by Jim Gallt, designer of the TC4, I reckoned they were the best to start with. I plan on going to Kona for PID control in the future and firstly will add SSR control of the roast heater, controlled by the Arduino PWM, then fan control next and intend to add in control over the eject function.

Muscles

on 1320813304:

Shame you could not look at variable power to the element, rather than just On and Off... AM

Any reason why I can't use two TRIAC's, one for element and one for fan? It has already been done here: http://nselabs.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/behold/

Muscles

Many thanks UNM, I have also read up on your Hottop threads on here...

on 1320831600:

Two pics. One of the jumper link, one of the arduino and LCD. Note the LCD adapter connector cable - needs to be right way round or it can blow the LCD. You may well have a different LCD. I decided to use Jim's LCDadapter as the extra cost of ordering that at the same time as the TC4 was minimal. Given the number of pins on the Mega, and extra code space, a generic LCD should also work, just may need another library added. The crappy LCD I initially ordered had a link to a REALLY old LCD library - the current one I got off the net works and is much easier to code with. The jumper takes pins SDA and SCL from the mega to pins marked AN4 and AN5 on the TC4 shield. These are for I2C signals and just come out on different pins on the Mega. When soldering that pin header, I bent pins AN4 and AN5 90 degrees before soldering - made a good tight bend and everything fits nicely. Mine is really simple right now - two thermocouples to the roaster. Control is still manual and separate to the arduino. Arduino power comes either from a 12VDC battery, or from the USB interface if on the laptop. I am still using aBourbon on the Arduino and pBourbon on the laptop (under Processing 1.2.1). As these were also written by Jim Gallt, designer of the TC4, I reckoned they were the best to start with. I plan on going to Kona for PID control in the future and firstly will add SSR control of the roast heater, controlled by the Arduino PWM, then fan control next and intend to add in control over the eject function.

JimG

on 1320884456:

Any reason why I can't use two TRIAC's, one for element and one for fan? It has already been done here: http://nselabs.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/behold/

You can use two TRIAC's.  One TRIAC can be set up to provide variable power using phase angle control.  The other can be set up to use a close relative of PWM called integral cycle control (ICC).  The way ICC is implemented on the TC4 system is that it sequentially looks at every half wave of the AC power and decides whether that wave should be on or off, depending on the output level requested by the user. Both the aArtisanQ application and the aCatauiQ application (both are in beta release) support these methods of variable power on OT1 and OT2. Happy to bore you further with the details, if desired. Jim

UNM

on 1322273793:

Both the aArtisanQ application and the aCatauiQ application (both are in beta release) support these methods of variable power on OT1 and OT2. Happy to bore you further with the details, if desired.

You can try, but I doubt you will bore me. I assume latest version is always available on the googlecode site? Current seems to be r760 from Nov 22 Will take a look at the code sometime and see how it applies to my roaster (hottop in my case) as it seems to be quest based for now (AC fan). OT, but TC4 related: I just had solar hot water installed. The controller has three temp sensors (roof, mid tank and tank inlet) and simple control of circulation pump. Installers recommend a separate  timer to control the electric heat boost. I immediately thought a TC4/Arduino should be able to do the job better and control boost based not just on time of day but also past temp variations as indicator of usage patterns and solar heat contribution. Might be an interesting project for someone - not me at the moment as I got too much on.

readeral

on 1320812334:

As if I don't already have enough on my plate I have decided to have a go at automating the KKTO. Now, I am far from a skilled DIY'er but I have a plan and recently discovered that I have some Arduino familiar and electronically capable mates so thats a start. I've had the Arduino & LCD for a week or two and today I finally received my TC4 Shield Kit so the fun will soon begin. Soldering can't be that hard right? I'm going to build a control box to house the Arduino and TC4 and to allow for manual control of the element and the fan in the TO. Via the PC I want to monitor, record and load roast profiles and ROR and will be trying this with both Artisan and RoastLogger. I'll probably muck around with the Halogen version of TO as the heat does rise an drop quicker than the solid element but I've been told the halogen elements life will be greatly reduced by the constant and faster switching of power - I have no idea if this is true.

Sorry to necro an old thread - does anyone know if Muscles pulled off the fan control? (Or if muscles is still active around somewhere?) Looking at implementing this myself, but honestly trying to work out if it was worth it.

Brett H

Sorry mate.  I don't even see him on Facebook anymore.  Pity, such a good guy.  Good luck with your mods... Please be safe!!!

galumay

on 1465009649:

Sorry to necro an old thread - does anyone know if Muscles pulled off the fan control? (Or if muscles is still active around somewhere?) Looking at implementing this myself, but honestly trying to work out if it was worth it.

I went down the path with my KKTO, but I never got round to using it to control the heat. It ended up being used simply to relay temps to the RoastLogger software. I could never see the point in controlling the fan in a KKTO, i put a dimmer switch on and played with it and really it added nothing, better just leaving the fan run flat out. I do see some value in the heat control, just never got round to it and now I am building a new 2.3kg roaster so it will probably never get done!