Turns a Raspberry Pi into a cheap, universal & web-enabled kiln Controller. Forked from the reflow oven project: picoReflow which I found through a blog post on succulent ceramics
I used kilnController to add a firing schedule control to a little pottery kiln I picked up second hand. The kiln is 10A/240V rated to 1000 degrees C. It has a door switch and a basic thermostat which allows for 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% power but no timer, which means constant monitoring if you want to ramp the temperature up slowly or soak the wares at any point. With the kilnController I can now set it up for a bisque or low temperature glaze firing and leave it to its own devices, checking progress every now and then on my mobile phone or PC.
Standard Interface
Curve Editor
- Raspberry Pi Zero W - any pi will do but the zeros are the cheapest at about $15 here in Australia
- MAX 31855 Cold-Junction K-Type Thermocouple (about $6 on eBay)
- K-Type Thermocouple Sensor -100°C to 1250°C ($3 on eBay)
- Solid State Relay Module SSR-25DA 25A /250V 3-32V DC Input 24-380VAC Output (again, about $6 on eBay)
MAX31855 to RPi PIN (Pin Name)
Vin not connected 3Vo to Pin 1 (3.3v DC) GND to Pin 9 (Ground) DO to Pin 11 (GPIO 17) CS to Pin 13 (GPIO 27) CLK to Pin 15 (GPIO 22)
External dependencies have been kept to a minimum to make it easily deployable on any flavor of open-source operating system.
- greenlet-0.4.2
- bottle-0.12.4
- gevent-1.0
- gevent-websocket-0.9.3
$ sudo apt-get install python-pip python-dev libevent-dev
$ sudo pip install ez-setup
$ sudo pip install greenlet bottle gevent gevent-websocket
$ emerge -av dev-libs/libevent dev-python/pip
$ pip install ez-setup
$ pip install greenlet bottle gevent gevent-websocket
If you want to deploy the code on a PI for production:
$ pip install RPi.GPIO
This only applies to non-Raspbian installations, since Raspbian ships RPi.GPIO with the default installation.
If you also want to use the in-kernel SPI drivers with a MAX31855 sensor:
$ sudo pip install Adafruit-MAX31855
$ git clone https://github.com/botheredbybees/kilnController.git
$ cd kilnController
All parameters are defined in config.py. There's a copy in config.py.EXAMPLE so you can review and change things to your heart's content.
$ cd kilnController
$ python kilncontrollerd.py
If you want the server to autostart on boot, run:
sudo nano /etc/rc.local
add the line:
`sudo python /home/pi/kilnController/kilncontrollerd.py &`
Open Browser and goto http://127.0.0.1:8080 (for local development) or the IP of your PI and the port defined in config.py (default 8081).
I put together some step by step instructions on https://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-Web-Enabled-High-Temperature-Kiln-Controll
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
For more info on the parent project, see picoReflow: https://apollo.open-resource.org/mission:resources:picoreflow