Arduino based Sous-Vide cooker. (Pronounced soo-vee)
Low cost, high wattage, easy to operate Sous-Vide with all the features of a $400 cooker, with the added benefit of having some fun building it.
As of writing this, it is the summer after my sophmore year of college studying electrical engineering. What that means to me is that I will be living off campus in an apartment, and losing access to a school meal plan and gaining a strict meal budget. Cooking and eating good food is a hobby of mine, and good cooking reqires good equiptment. A Sous-Vide cooker makes a great addition to my arsenal for a number of reasons -
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Ease of cooking with an engineering students schedule. Toss almost any meat/veggie/combo in the cooker and leave it for hours at a time. When hungry, sear meat in a pan for 45 seconds and dinner is served.
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Quality of food produced. The Sous-Vide has similar benefits to a crockpot/slow cooker, but with much finer grain control which allows for higher quality end products - especially with meat. A perfect medium rare cut of beef is a snap with a Sous-Vide, and no matter how long you leave it, you wont lose the perfect internal temperature. A crockpot cant keep up.
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Most importantly, the savings! Eating high quality meat is expensive, a habit that reflects poorly on a savings account. With a Sous-Vide, I can buy large cuts of tougher, flavorful meat (i.e. tri-tip, hanger steak) and turn them into meals that are cheap and taste like a million bucks.
So all in all, a Sous-Vide makes perfect sense. The only problem is, a high wattage, good quality Sous-Vide can cost $150 all the way to $400 dollars (since my original research there have been lower cost units have come out with lower wattages, but mine still beats those in all but looks) . With some extra time on my hands during the summer, I built the WATT.
| Item | Price (USD) | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Arduino Nano | $3.00 | |
| Camco 1000W Heater element | $13.55 | |
| Solid State Relay | $9.95 | https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13015 |
| Gorilla brand Silicone Sealant | $4.84 | |
| Circulation Pump | $8.99 | |
| Adafruit LCD Shield Kit | $19.95 | https://www.adafruit.com/product/772 |
| Waterproof DS18B20 temperature sensor | $9.95 | https://www.adafruit.com/product/381 |
| 1" Female Threaded Copper Coupling | $5-9 | |
| AC Cable with plug | $0 (Chop one off an old appliance) | N/A |
Tools/Equiptment -USB A to mini-B to program arduino
Optional Items Buzzer
Total cost: $75.23
Many of the items here that are electronic in nature I had in my possesion already, making the cost lower. Substitutions can be made for most of these items for parts on hand in another build.
One thing that I didnt want to cheap out on was any part that handeled mains alternating current. As this is was a DIY project, and not thouroughly checked out by anybody but me, I decided to be extra safe. The relay, spade connectors, and wire all are rated for more current than they should ever reasonably be pulling.
This build is still unrefined. While it has full functionality and can cook some delicious food, it is a pain to set up and looks very messy (which makes it slightly unsafe). The build definitely needs some polishing. In the future, I'd like to combine all the components into a single unit, along the lines of what was done in this photo:
This would potientially mean designing a custom pcb which I would love to do. I would also love to move past a 16x2 LCD. I did the best I could with so little space, but the menu system could be cleaned up significantly.
Though the WATT isnt exactly like I want at this point, it was still quite a bit of fun to build and will continue to pay dividends for quite some time!