Raspberry Pi as a Thermostat?

Neon Aurora

New Member
Messages
1,376
Location
New Mexico
I was spending some time with my SO last night and I mentioned I will probably need to buy another Herpstat before breeding season rolls around so that I can have two incubators; one for males and one for females. Obviously, Herpstats are an investment. He mentioned that I could probably use a Raspberry Pi, which is apparently a small computer that you can program to do just about anything. Now, I know nothing about programming, but he does. He thinks it would be relatively easy to program it to do the same thing a Herpstat does with the same (or better) accuracy and he could teach me how to program it. It's only $30, so it could definitely be worth it if it has the same level of accuracy.

Has anyone tried this?

If I go ahead and do it, then I'll probably be making a thread on how I did it with instructions and everything. The best part; once we get it programmed to perfection, I can share the code on here and then anyone can buy a Raspberry Pi and just use the code so you won't have to program it yourself.

It also isn't limited to just temperature. You could control the humidity and O2 levels as well. I'm probably not going to go into all of that because controlling the humidity and O2 levels is very easy to do manually. But it is pretty cool.
 

J&M UNE

New Member
Messages
102
Location
brainerd mn
Does it have fail safes for power outages and stuff? That would be my only concern and if its on/off style or proportional... Just purchased another herpstat 4 there all 10% off right now. And I ordered a ve 2d to try out on one of my bigger boa enclosed running rhp

Sent from my Z936L using Tapatalk
 

Neon Aurora

New Member
Messages
1,376
Location
New Mexico
I'll definitely post updates on my progress. It's just a small computer, so it would not have built in fail safes. However, these could be programmed in. It's definitely a more involved project than buying a herpstat, but I think it could be fun.
 

Neon Aurora

New Member
Messages
1,376
Location
New Mexico
Oh, and of course it would be programmed to be proportional and not on-off. That's probably what will take the most work. We'll have to program it to apply a certain amount of power for a certain number of tenths of a degree it drops (IE, 10% for .1 degree drop, 20% for .2 degree drop). This part will take a lot of trial and error to find the right amounts of power to apply. Watching my Herpstat, it sometimes applies 13% power, so it will take some work to figure out which numbers to use.
 

Neon Aurora

New Member
Messages
1,376
Location
New Mexico
I have indeed been looking into it. I haven't had time to actually start because of finals at university, but I've looked into it a bit. So far, I've found that I will need a couple of things: The computer itself, a temperature probe, and a device to make it possible to vary the amount of power being used (not sure what yet).

It seems doable, but will cost more than $30 and will definitely be a project. But I will be starting it at the end of this week.
 

Visit our friends

Top