I had a need for a temperature scanner to troubleshoot overheating on my Duramax LB7 pickup while towing. A commercial solution to collect 6 temperatures may have run me over a thousand dollars so I ordered some thermistors and for about 40 bucks in parts made one myself.
Parts include an Arduino Pro Mini and a Nokia 3310 graphical LCD screen.
Here is the schematic: Arduino 6 Temperature Scanner
Here is the sketch and LCD library for Arduino: Nokia_Six_Analog_Display
I found your 6 temp arduino project and the schematic link works but the library download will not open, unzipped it but wont show. I like the nokia display better than Jameco’s rewritten version. Thanks.
Can you try to download again or possibly try the download on another computer? It worked fine for me, Inside the zip file I have the sample code along with the LCD library I used which was created by Carlos Rodriguez.
I re downloaded the file, unzipped it on another computer, same thing. when I get to the unzipped folder I open and get Nokia_Six_Analog_Display.pde then open that and get a windows cannot open this file, windows needs to know what program created it…………I can’t figure out how to go any further. I do not have an arduino yet or any software for that yet. Could that be the problem ?
I guess I answered my own dilema, I downloaded notepad and I got it.
Ahhh, I misunderstood you. Go to http://arduino.cc/ and download the Arduino IDE to open .PDE files. Before you can download the .pde Arduino sketch into your Arduino you will need to copy the library into your libraries directory of the Arduino IDE.
I’m interested in building this project but the 10 degree inaccuracy that you mention at the end would be a problem. Have you found a way to calibrate the readings in any way?
It all had to do with my scaling, I was using a bag of ice water and needed something more stable for the hot end like some hot water instead of my lighter! I am sure there are more scientific ways to scale the thermistors but that’s how I did it. Also you might check out some more precise thermistors. I was scaling from 32 deg F to 200 DEG F, I had the trouble when going to the extremes of the thermistor temperature range. if you don’t need that wide of a range you could get much better scaling, for instance if you were just interested in 50-100 degF (ambient temp) you could easily use the same thermistor and get within one degree.
Here is the termistor I used (29 cents): http://www.newark.com/epcos/b57891m102j/ntc-thermistor/dp/21C9770
You might try this sensor: http://adafruit.com/products/165
The output looks very linear. And there are actual temperature modules you can get from Adafruit or Sparkfun that might be a bit more linear than just a raw thermistor.
Thank you very much! I imagine you could use boiling water for 212°F
is there a way to modify this setup to accomdate a higher temp (600f)?
I would like to use it to monitor the exhaust temp on my motorcycle.
Thanks
Paul
9:52 AM
It looks like the highest temp thermistor I can find is 300degC which is 572F here on Newark It would be a snap to put in the higher temp thermistor.
I suppose if you need higher temp you will need to use a thermocouple. Thermo couples generate a small voltage instead of changing resistance like a thermistor. I imagine that with some modification the temperature scanner could read a thermocouple. Thermocouples are more expensive but have much higher temperature range.
Thermocouple