Been a while!

Just because I haven't been posting, doesn't mean I having been Making, fixing, building or creating. I've just been lazy about updating. I will try to do better!

I have a couple of projects coming up in the next couple of weeks and I plan on posting my pizza making schema. It's a combination of a recipe and a process and a whole lot of tweaking!

It's January, so I won't be brewing much. I'll start up again in full swing in March. My goal is 25 batches again this year. I missed that goal last year. I only got to batch 23.

Projects on deck are:

1. Camera interval timer (arduino)
2. Curtains for the Dining room and the kids rooms.
3. Finishing building my new Ubuntu main computer.

It's not all glamorous, but it's all making!

Coming next to my kitchen, Low budget Sous-vide

Time to get back into the micro controller world. I plan on blending micro-controllers with temperature sensors, heaters and pumps to COOK!

Sous-vide

French for under vacuum. The process basically consists of vacuum packing food in a plastic bag and immersing it in water bath at a constant temperature (typically the temperature of the food when it's considered "done") for a long enough period of time to let it reach that heat all the way through and kill any possible pathogens in the food.

Most food, when cooked sous-vide requires "finishing" or a quick trip into the frying pan or under the broiler to give it the appearance of having been cooked by that method.

Two of the biggest benefits of sous-vide are that the food is extremely moist since all of the moisture is trapped in the bag with the food and the food can rest at the "done" temperature for many hours without becoming overdone, allowing for wide flexibility in serving times.

There will be much more to come on this topic.

I have an idea!

Most of my sentences that start like that end up becoming long involved projects and this one is probably no different.

I need an arduino and an ethershield for this idea.
I want to make a device that I can "telnet" to from the internet log in, issue a command and start, shutdown or reboot my home pc.

I have exposed a couple of ports on my Ubuntu box to the internet. I’d like to keep it powered down unless I intend to use it.

Having a device like this would let me save energy and secure my machine just a bit better. If it's turned off, you can't hack at it.

The Kegerator

I'm starting something mildly ambitious for my first real Arduino project. I'll be making a temperature controller for a chest freezer. The net effect will be to be able to switch the freezer on and off based on a "Set temp."

The controller will consist of the following:

• A temp probe
• An LCD to show the current and set temperatures
• Up and Down buttons to set the temp
• A massive 5vdc/400ma driven 240V/30A relay
• An Arduino boot-loaded AVR ATMega328

Eventually, I intend to add a lid switch to detect an open lid, an alarm to tell you when the temp is X degrees too high and another temp sensor in the tower to switch on a fan to keep the lines cool when the tower gets too warm.

Pictures and code can be found here:
http://kegeratorcontroller.blogspot.com/