I’m pleased to announce that I have received the minDUINO boards from Hackvana, built and tested one and all is well! You can download all the design files from the tab marked minDUINO v1.4 above. I will be adding directions on how to program the board via it’s ICSP port later on.

minDUINO v1.4 Assembled

The first thing I did once the board was assembled was to program it with the obligatory ‘Blink’ program, closely followed by ‘Fade’ to demonstrate the PWM capabilities of pin D10 (Physical pin 16). I’m very pleased with the board and I’m looking forward to seeing Amelia build her kit which I have put together from stock components.

The minDUINO will also form the central part of a Reflow Oven Controller which I’m currently developing. I have a cheap and cheerful toaster oven obtained from Currys/PC World for the princely sum of £24.99. The controls allow you to set the oven always on and full power. The idea behind my controller is to utilise this setting and control the heater elements with some sort of PID model programmed into the AVR. PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) to quote Wikipedia: “A PID controller calculates an error value as the difference between a measured process variable and a desired setpoint. The controller attempts to minimize the error by adjusting the process through use of a manipulated variable.” This is rather more complicated than a thermostat! Stay tuned for updates.