Humidity and temperature controllers

[pirenzi]

Hello,

I have been thinking about setting up a cheese cave now that we have started making cheese again. We have a spare half fridge in our house that we just turned on yesterday. On the lowest setting, it is holding about 10L of water at 14C over the last 24 hours, so we might not need any cooling control.

My original intention was to have a microcontroller controlled system for the temperature and humidity, and implement all of the PID control in software myself. But I was doing a bit of looking on the internet for solutions, and I happened to come across this controller http://www.ebay.com/itm/DC5V-Humidity-sensitive- switches-Humidity-switch-modules-Humidity-controller-/400662258968?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5d4954e518 and it would seem like for $5 and free shipping, this might almost be a steal. The relay appears to be able to handle mains voltages, so could be an interesting (and inexpensive) option for cooling also.

I think that I might try this controller out, and post the results if it works out.

Cheers,

Piers

[John@PC]

Hi Piers,  It sounds like you're very capable of integrating this into your humidity control system but be aware (and you probably are) that you will need a 5vdc power supply, a humidifier and the wiring.  Also, you will need a sensor for the %RH so you can set the potentiometer on the PC board to the correct setting.  I actually have some of these that I bought thinking that they were a good low-cost solution for humidity control but we ended up going with the Willhi controller for our CCRH.   If you haven't bought the module yet I would be happy to mail one or two of these to you free of charge (just message me with your address).