Parts and Designs
Our initial plan for the project used a PC, simplifying the software by making a highly capable platform available for processing and display. A laptop would be convenient to take outdoors,and could use a plug-in probe and fan. PC-interfaced thermometers are available, so the remaining electronics design work would be what’s needed to drive the fan.We thought a while about using an expensive laptop where it was likely to fall or get spilled on, though, and decided a standalone controller with its own embedded processor was a better idea.