Amazon Temp control deal

yomomma said:
Draw me what you wired.
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Sometimes just talking it out is all that's needed, so while at work this evening, I started sketching it out, and had a eureka moment.

So picture, as I described, a 14ga extension cord cut in two and stripped. Let's tie the greems together. Let's tie the whites together. Now lets screw the blacks into the two ssr load terminals, right? So without any additional anything, I plugged a work light in to the female, then plugged the extension cord male into the wall. The LED worklight was on... but dim... if I connected the triggers to the ssr, and energized it, the little red light came on, and the worklight glowed at 100%. Weird, eh? Thst's why I thought "bad ssr". But as I was sketching a better drawing, and labelling each item, I wrote "14ga block heater cord... lit ends". Pow, there's the smoking gun, I bet. Something told me that was screwing me up. Right after work I replaced the cable with a regular 16ga, unlit, and it worked perfectly.

Problem diagnosed just with the gentle prodding of "show me what you did" :)

I went with the lit ends to provide some kind of "load end" indication that power was actually flowing. I'll try reinstalling that one end tomorrow - I think the wall-end being lit may have soured the neutral, and snuck power all the way to the end of the "turned off by ssr" cable.

Thanks! I'll be installing into the project box tomorrow. Just have to find a bit of thermal compound, to mount the ssr to the box (furnace is only 500w, so shouldn't work the ssr too hard!)
 
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This guy has lots of videos and a few on PID controllers. He is a good teacher.
I used it for a BBQ smoker but the concept is the same.

 
I built my PID from Amazon parts and thr instructional video from Johnny's Reloading Bench. It turned out great and works well, my only regret is not building one 10 years sooner.
 
I know of fellas that have those controllers from Amazon, and they seem to work pretty good, although they didn't use them for melting lead.
 
Not electrically inclined myself but could this be used to make a cool bot setup? Taking a residential ac unit which usually kicks out at about 15 or 17 C and getting to cool down to 2C for a meat cooler?
 
trucker60 said:
Not electrically inclined myself but could this be used to make a cool bot setup? Taking a residential ac unit which usually kicks out at about 15 or 17 C and getting to cool down to 2C for a meat cooler?
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No. Evaporator temperature in an AC is too high to get that low.
AC is considered high temperature while refrigeration is medium temperature and a freezer is considered low temperature.
 
gth said:
Now $17

Anything else required other than a better probe to get going?

Not sure how the power supply works if I only wanted to use it as a temp display.
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Just get a lamp cord or something similar and hook it to the power terminals on the back. Should be labelled and come with basic schematics. Very simple if all you want is the temperature reading.
 
Just an update. I have used the cx100 with the supplied TC and so far so good

I haven’t tried hooking up the relay and actually using it to control my shot maker yet but I will soon.

I basically just used it to display temp. Made 125lbs of shot on Saturday.

For $17 if it lasts it seems like a deal.
 
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