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nanolith | 2 months ago

Around 15 years ago, I built a barbecue controller. This controller had four temperature probes that could be used to check the temperature of the inner cooking chamber as well as various cuts of meat. It controlled servos that opened and closed vents and had a custom derived PID algorithm that could infer the delayed effects of oxygen to charcoal.

Anyway, of relevance to this thread is that the controller connected to the local wireless network and provided an embedded HTTP server with an SVG based web UI that would graph temperatures and provided actual knobs and dials so that the controller could be tweaked. SVG in the browser works nicely with Javascript.

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tambourine_man|2 months ago

This sounds awesome. Did you ever filmed it working?

nanolith|2 months ago

Sadly, I did not. I have the source code on an old laptop somewhere. I was disheartened when I considered productizing it and discovered just how deep of a patent tarpit I was dealing with.

It's on my list to revisit in the future. At this point, most of the patents are coming up on expiration, and it would make for a great open source project. Hardware has gotten much better over the subsequent years; there are nicer lower power solutions with integrated Bluetooth LE as well as other low power wireless technologies.

imp0cat|2 months ago

Exactly my thoughts! Where is the youtube video? :D I really want to see it. :)