My goal was to make easy to build mod with thermocontrol. I've had few arduino mini pro, which has 4 analog inputs, so it was easy to use it. The mod works with two cells (2S) Li batteries, i've used one from RC model (25/35C 500 mAh Zippy compact).
Theoretical power is restricted by main FET and battery currents (well, above 100 watts in my setup, which is enough for almost everything), one can use something like IRLB3034PBF with cooler and bigger battery to create something like disco smoke generator even.
Its precision is quite crude (numbers jumps +/- 10 degrees when nothing pressed even) but enough to keep coil from overheating and produce good steam. I plan to change some resistors values and switch to arduino's internal 1.1V analog reference to get precision better (2-4 times i think) in future. May be need some low pass filtering on analog inputs also.
It has sleep mode (120 seconds from last coil use), eats about 1.2..1.5 mA while in. Coil won't turn on if battery is less than 6.2V (this is configurable in sketch).
The program shows on its display following information (by lines):
1. The coil temperature, status and buttons
2. The coil resistance, arduino temperature
3. Target temperature set, PWM output value
4. Battery voltage (flashes if too low)
Sketch for arduino: vasimv/ard-smoke · GitHub
Photos of my mod (this is test sample case, made on 3D printer):
Theoretical power is restricted by main FET and battery currents (well, above 100 watts in my setup, which is enough for almost everything), one can use something like IRLB3034PBF with cooler and bigger battery to create something like disco smoke generator even.
Its precision is quite crude (numbers jumps +/- 10 degrees when nothing pressed even) but enough to keep coil from overheating and produce good steam. I plan to change some resistors values and switch to arduino's internal 1.1V analog reference to get precision better (2-4 times i think) in future. May be need some low pass filtering on analog inputs also.
It has sleep mode (120 seconds from last coil use), eats about 1.2..1.5 mA while in. Coil won't turn on if battery is less than 6.2V (this is configurable in sketch).
The program shows on its display following information (by lines):
1. The coil temperature, status and buttons
2. The coil resistance, arduino temperature
3. Target temperature set, PWM output value
4. Battery voltage (flashes if too low)
Sketch for arduino: vasimv/ard-smoke · GitHub
Photos of my mod (this is test sample case, made on 3D printer):
