Temperature controlled cooling system (Part 1 – The Plan)
A good friend of mine has built an pretty awesome custom desk for his office. His desktop has a nice spot, behind a glass door in the desk. The only problem is that it gets warm in there when the desktop is running. He built a pair of fans with filters into the desk to cool the area where the desktop lives – but has to remember to turn them on when he turns the PC on.
We talked a bit and have in the end, he basically only needs a sensor that can track how warm the storage area is verses the room temperature and based on the difference, turns on the fans at varying speeds to cool the desktop.
I would also like to have at least some kind of indicator light to let me know what the controller thinks it is doing – so I plan to use a Red/Blue two color LED as my indicator and progress
To start with, I’ve broken out the ranges like this
| Difference | Fan Speed | Indicator |
| < 2°C | OFF | NO LED |
| < 4°C | 25% | 100% BLUE |
| < 8°C | 50% | 50% / 50% BLUE/RED |
| < 10°C | 75% | 25% / 75% BLUE/RED |
| 10°C + | 100% | 100% RED |
It’ll take some testing to see if these speed and temperature actually work or not…. but I can at least get him something to test.
Here’s a little demo video of the prototype working…
Next will be to make some decisions on how I want the displays to work and how much more complicated it will get…
debbie April 13, 2015 3:37 AM
this is awesome. . I really liked this.