Air control automation using robotic arm

[FireUpTheChainsaw]

Behold! The problem i was trying to solve is forgetting to turn the air control down after reloading the stove. They way this works in this prototype is I press a button on that keypad, after which a timer starts. Every minute the robotic arm moves to the right a little bit and as a result the air control closes a little bit. The whole cycle takes about 20 minutes to go to halfway air closed. I can also use the keypad to tell it to close it more (or less). I can even set a delay of 5 minutes so it doesn't start closing it before that. The round thing on the air control is a magnet, which is how it gets dragged when the arm moves. This all works surprisingly well.

Version two will have a temperature sensor that will open/close the air control as needed to maintain a set temperature (think of those coils on Blaze King, only digital). Also, I could make it beep loudly if the stove temp is too high/low.

For those technically inclined, I used an Arduino to program the whole thing. If anyone is interested, I can send you the code.

 

[old_]

Cool!

 

[begreen]

Have you seen this thread?

Wood stove automation using the Raspberry Pi

Happy New Year! It has been a couple of years since I started working on my wood stove automation project. Its based on Python and currently runs on a Raspberry Pi3 Model B. I got quite far but until now I never documented any part of what I did. Took me about a week to take pictures and...

www.hearth.com

 

[FireUpTheChainsaw]

I have not, thank you, very interesting!

 

[EbS-P]

Now you just have to remember to push the button

Ideally, based on temperature say 20 minutes before, it would choose on its own 1 of 3 modes, start up, cruise and coaling. And you could chose a low medium or high output. Programming how it knows what burn stage it’s in is the challenge. I can just look at it. I know if the load was big or small and based on some rough estimate of time and how the flames look know the temp is coming down and I don’t have to adjust the air settings to try and maintain my set point temp.

Cool project