temperature sensor and feedback control

PeterGibbons

I am requesting some direction and advice on products available through parallax that will perform temperature sensor and feedback control.· In this particular project, I am looking to heat a copper heat sink to 50-120 degrees C in roughly 5 mins and then reduce power to my mica heater to reach steady state conditions on the heat sink thereafter.· Ideally, I am seeking a controller that is capable of holding a set-point temperature and maintain steady state conditions by either regulating voltage or resistance.· I would like the power source of the heater to be a 120 V standard plug outlet.· I have estimated that the desired power to the heater will be 12 to 63 watts depending on the final temperature of the heat sink.· Therefore voltage would need to be reduced to roughly 11 to 27 volts.· The heater can operate either in AC or DC power conditions.· I am fairly unfamiliar with the devises needed to complete this task (solid state relays, etc.), however, I am fairly familiar with BASIC language.· Any advice and links to products that may be of assistance is greatly appreciated.

JKtech

There are a lot of ways of doing this. The least complicated and cheapest is to use a solidstate relay and use the pwm comand to control duty cycle or frequency. You can use thermal coupler or some other tempsensor for feedback. You will probably use a PID loop for control. PID loops will take a little time to master to make it stable but I think Parallax had some info on PID loops in some of their education manuals.