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• Voltage Regulator

  greg • 07/09/2018 at 05:38 • 0 comments

  I want the device to start as soon as possible, so a low input boost regulator is needed, but at high temperatures, the input voltage may get higher than 3.3V.  I need to see how well the adaptive thermal circuit works to see if we can keep the voltage below 3.3V, but for now I will plan on a buck-boost regulator that can start up with less than 1 volt, like the LTC3106.  That is probably overkill for this application and I may later try to replace it with an adaptation of the  joule thief and a linear regulator.  

• Thermal Circuit

  greg • 07/06/2018 at 04:57 • 0 comments

  To generate power with a Peltier device, you need to apply a thermal differential across the device.  You need to make one side hot and one side cold like this:

  The BBQ is much hotter than the air, so generating a differential is not difficult.  The difficulty comes in trying to manage the extreme temperatures of the BBQ.  Lets take a closer look at the elements of the thermal circuit:

  Point A is contacting the BBQ, which could be several hundred degrees Celsius.  The air in the vicinity of the BBQ could be a little higher than typical room temperature, the standard commercial temperature range of 0 to 70 degrees Celsius is probably a reasonable approximation for point D.  Points B and C are the interfaces to the Peltier device.  The TEC1-12706 like this one ( http://peltiermodules.com/peltier.datasheet/TEC1-12706.pdf ) is rated for a maximum temperature of 138 degrees Celsius, so the biggest challenge will be dissipating enough heat from the BBQ before it reaches the Peltier device.  A common heatsink like 655-53AB from Wakefield should be sufficient for the cold side.  For the hot side we will need some sort of heat pipe.  Since we want to dissipate heat before it gets to the Peltier, we actually do not want a high performance heat pipe and a simple slab of metal, like aluminium should fit the bill.  To ensure that enough heat is removed before the Peltier, we can add another heatsink on the heat pipe between the heat source and the Peltier.  This will take some trial and error to determine the right amount of heat to remove (it would probably be a lot quicker in a thermal simulation tool, but I don't have access to that, and it sort of takes the fun out of it anyway).  The basic thermal circuit I envision is something like this:

  I am concerned with the wide variation of temperatures we could see from the BBQ.  The max temperature is quite high, but I also want it to turn on quickly, so I need it to start working at lower temperatures. If only there was a way to actively adapt the thermal circuit as the temperature rises...

  Adaptive Thermal Circuit

  If you look at the datasheet for the Wakefield 655-53AB, one thing that you will notice is that the effectiveness of the thermal transfer is very dependent on the airflow across the device.  WIth natural convection, there is a much larger temperature differential between the air and the hot side, than there is when air is forced through the fins.  When the temperature starts rising, we will see a higher voltage across the Peltier device, we can use this voltage rise to turn on a fan to force air through the fins and remove more heat from the heat pipe.  Thanks to the popularity of drones, there are some very cost effective, small, low power motors readily available.  Fortunately when the voltage rises, it also means we have extra energy available to power the fan.  If we happen to cool it too much, the voltage will drop so it should self regulate, but we should tune the gain to avoid listening to the fan cycle too often.  

• Controller Development Board

  greg • 06/28/2018 at 03:43 • 0 comments

  This will need a microcontroller to read and report the temperature.  There are several ways the temperature could be reported, locally or remotely.  The simplest would be to write it on a display connected locally, but it would be more useful if the temperature could be transmitted and displayed remotely so you can check up on it from a distance.  A development board with a wireless radio can do both.  If I decide to take this to production, I would like to include a long range radio that can go through walls so that you can keep tabs on a smoker from inside your house.  A sub-GHz radio like Z-wave used in home automation would be ideal, but the development boards are a little steep for a hobby project, so I think I'll stick with BLE.  There is no problem finding a low cost BLE development board, the difficulty is choosing from the myriad of options.  The ideal board for this project would include BLE and a low power display with easy to use tools.  After checking a few of my favorite hobby sites, I found just the board at Adafruit under Wireless/Bluetooth.  The Pixl.js board includes both BLE and a display, and it is programmed in Javascript with tools that run in the browser.  I can even program it using my chromebook.  It doesn't get much easier than that.  It is not the lowest priced BLE option, but the included display will save me from having to by it separately.  They also have a Puck.js if I want to have a headless sensor to broadcast to a remote display. 

• Temperature Sensor

  greg • 06/21/2018 at 04:37 • 0 comments

  The temp sensor needs to be economical and work at high temperatures.  A BBQ is too hot for thermistors so thermocouples are probably the next most cost effective.  There are chips that can digitize thermocouples like the LTC2485 and the MAX31855.  The price seems similar, but the MAX31855 is tuned for the specific type of thermocouple so there will be less software processing.  The K type covers the temperatures of interest so I'll add the MAX31855KASA+ to the component list.

• Peltier Module

  greg • 06/17/2018 at 21:13 • 0 comments

  The first step is to find a suitable peltier module to use.  Let's try to scope the requirements.  To measure and report temperature should take well under 100mW.  We don't have any significant size restrictions.  I don't have a big prototype budget and one of the goals is to find a cost effective solution, so price and availability are important.  

  A little searching online makes it pretty clear that thermo-electric-coolers (TEC) are more common than thermo-electric generators (TEG) and so the price and selection of TEC is significantly better than TEG.  There are many examples of people using the TEC devices for generation, even though their generation capabilities are not usually characterized very well.  Most of the people trying to use these for power generation are trying to extract much more power than I need, so I feel pretty comfortable that the TEC1-12706, which seems to be a popular low price module, will be enough for this project.  

  The maximum working temperature for this module is 150C.  This is significantly less than the maximum temperature inside the BBQ, so we need to be careful to shield it from the heat.  There are higher temp devices, but the cost is significantly higher.  We may need to revisit this selection, but it should be good enough for the initial prototypes. 
  

  I'll add the TEC1-12706 to the component list.

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