Hey everyone, I have been looking into Arduino and Teensy to build myself a little thermostat. I am a keen home brewer hobbyist and work IT professional as my day job. So I thought for a bit of fun I would try to combine my two passions in life. What I would like to build is a small thermostat to monitor the ambient temperature and the temperature of my brew during its fermentation stage. Log the information and control a thermostat that will switch a fridge on and off. Oh and I want to throw in a nice little LCD screen to display current temperatures.
Now I know that there is no way I will be able to create such a thing as a first project, but it is what I would ultimately like to build. I know I could just go and buy something that will do it. But where is the fun in that?
So my question is. Am I in the right place to get the hardware/documentation to build such a thing? And from what I can see Arduino and Teensy seem to be two similar products, I know this is the Arduino forums, but is there any advantage or using Arduino over Teensy? Or is it just personal preference?
Am I in the right place to get the hardware/documentation to build such a thing?
Yes, definitely. There's even someone working on such a project that you can get ideas from (check the "Exhibition" section).
I don't have a Teensy, but I looked into it in detail because I've been evaluating it for a project. There are definite similarities to the Arduino, but also some significant differences.
The Arduino offers a much larger, and very helpful, user community. It also has a large assortment of "shields" that can be used to speed up the building of many projects.
The Teensy gives you the ability to make real native USB peripherals, while the Arduino is serial-only (the ones with USB connectors actually just have a USB-to-serial chip). The Arduino does have an off-the-shelf solution for Ethernet connectivity, though. And there's even a variant on the market now with built-in WiFi.
For this particular project, the Arduino is probably better: your controller is probably not going to be tethered to a PC, and doesn't need any custom USB capabilities. But, as an IT guy, you may well find that the ability to make custom peripherals is very handy, so I'd encourage you to investigate the Teensy, too.
Thanks for all the useful replies... I think i will go with the Arduino, there is just so much more documentation available. And i found some nice kits online at my local supplier.
So i think ill start with one of them, and work my way through the tutorials...
they might not be so hard after all..