Working With 240v And Arduino

[hevans1944]

theres no way to know if it still flickers with just the heat cord

You could add the little light in parallel with the heat cord so both come on at the same time. Maybe even use a higher wattage bulb. Maybe blow air across a large light bulb and use that instead of a heat cord. Lots of ways to make warm, dry, air. Back in the day you could buy nichrome heaters wound in a spiral about a ceramic cone that had an Edison base so you could screw it into a light socket. Made a pretty good heater. Kinda dangerous though... fire hazard, burn hazard, electrical hazard with that exposed heating wire. Probably can't even buy them anymore without a ton of paperwork.

 

[mikgol]

Yep thats one way of doing it, but i think a 25w heat cord will draw just over 100ma @ 240 volts so ill leave it separate as its within the specs.

The light is a CFL bulb so it doesnt produce much heat, but its purpose is to give a light cue for mushrooms to grow so i think my setup will work well. Apparently "daylight" cfl lights work best from my research.

So far so good, the temp is perfect now as the arduino monitors temp and turns on/off heat cord. Come summer, ill have the opposite problem

 

[hevans1944]

Come summer, maybe you could add one or more Peltier coolers to the outside of the can, perhaps mounted between wraps of the heat cord? Not sure how you could control the humidity though. And you might have to add heat sinks to the Peltier coolers. Please post us some pictures when your first crop of 'shrooms matures.

 

[mikgol]

Will do Thanks again for your help, and everyone else who chipped in too. I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. Now I've got to experiment and program in the perfect conditions (how often to replace the air, fan speed to circulate air inside, pump water in etc.) The temperature and humidity are perfect, but I need to deal with CO2 buildup.There's nothing more satisfying than building something that works on it's own hey, long live automation