Now that we have all the performance’s information about the two ovens, I combine all the data into one single graph to see which one performs the most efficiently and eventually makes the final decision. Also today I started playing around with the Arduino toolkit to try get used to it. The main part of the toolkit is the Sparkfun RedBoard, which is one of a multitude of development boards based on the ATmega328. It has 14 digital...

As our old toaster oven is too big and doesn’t seem to be efficient enough for the project, we decided to buy a new and smaller toaster oven which we hope would provide a better heat transferring rate. My task for today is to test this new toaster oven. Following the temperature profile, we want our oven to be able to heat up to the peak of around 440F over the minimum time of  2.5 minutes and the maximum time of 5.5 minutes. I tested our...

Today I did a bit of research on the MAX6675 K-thermocouple that we decided to use and I found the following resource: Link: http://datasheets.maximintegrated.com/en/ds/MAX6675.pdf Basically, the MAX6675 performs cold-junction compensation and digitizes the signal from a type K-thermocouple. The data is output in a 12-bit resolution, SPI-compatible, read-only format. Some key features of the MAX6675 are: Direct Digital Conversion of Type -K...

Today we designed the block diagram for our system and develop some theories to better understand the project. The upper heating elements and the lower heating elements of the oven will be connected to our AC circuit by passing through a relay, which we’ll use as a switch to control the oven. The thermocouple will act as a temperature measurement to send the temperature data (which is an analog signal) of the oven to the A/D convertor...