Joshua Guthrie's Webpage » Nerd Stuff

Sous-Vide

admin — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 01:14:42 +0000

I finally finished my Sous-Vide setup. Cooked some fork tender sirloin from Friday and into Saturday.

Over all, I followed Scott’s design over at seattlefoodgeek.com. Great work. My design changes were:

Mounted the equipment in a used ammo can. I just didn’t have a warm feeling about mounting 120VAC electronics, inches above hot water. I’ve used ammo can’s for project enclosures before. I like them. Very cheap, and have that “kinda evil” look.

Added GFCI receptacles to the back. This allows me to use un-modified 120VAC heater elements without having to solder them everytime one burns up. It also adds a small measure of safety.

It also allows me to use a Crock-Pot. Which I did. Just turned the Crock-Pot on high, and let the solid-state relay blink it on and off. I made a custom immersion bath, worked great, but my wife wouldn’t let me bring it indoors. Something about being scared I’d burn the house down.

Added a 120 VAC 15A switch.

Used an aquarium pump inside the crock pot for water circulation. This helps tremendously keeping a uniform temp in the water bath.

Added a power entry connector (similar to those used in PC’s) to the “enclosure.”

Added test jacks to connect the platinum RTD, This allow a much quicker setup.

Made a custom lid for the Crock-Pot out of plexi-glass. Drilled holes in it for the equipment.

I bumped up the filtering on the PID algorithm to get rid of what appeared to be electrical noise.

Just had to use the night lights for indicators of when the heaters are on. I need to find one with some sort of design on it though.

I am so far very impressed with the unit. I was floored that one can buy an autotuning PID controller for under $40. So far, it appears to be holding the set-point temp to within +/- 0.2F or so.

After the steaks (cooked 24 hrs), I can’t wait to try new recipes. Recommend this book.

Included the random pictures of corn by accident and am too lazy to delete them.

Harkers Island, NC to Pax River (Lexington Park), MD Time Lapse

admin — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 01:46:32 +0000

Here’s the time lapse from Harkers Island, NC to Lexington Park, MD. Was a drive up for work.

Created with a cheap webcam (moved up to a cheap HP webcam) connected to a MacBook running Gawker. The mount consisted of a wooden spoon held to the rearview mirror using a clamp and zip-ties.

2010-05-06 Time Lapse of Sunset at Shell Point

admin — Mon, 10 May 2010 00:46:31 +0000

Was taken with a Canon Digital Rebel with a programmable trigger, mounted on a tripod. Individual frames then combined in Quicktime.

2010-02-12 Time Lapse of Snow Fall.

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:35:59 +0000

Time Lapse video from Dayton, OH to Harkers Island NC.

admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 16:56:05 +0000

Time lapse video taken from Dayton, Ohio to Harkers Island, North Carolina. Less than 30 mins total about 12 hours drive time. The sun rises about four minutes into the video (if the night is unbearable, fast forward 4:00). You can see it set about 15 minutes later. A whole day of driving compressed into less than 20 minutes.

The route was out of Ohio, through West Virginia, Virginia, than through NC. A large portion of it was though the Appalachian Mountains. If you look carefully at the video you can see it starting to sleet, then snow for a period.

Click “The Read the Rest of the Entry” to see.

This is a video play list. When the first ends, the next will begin automatically.

Created with a cheap webcam (Dynex® – 1.3MP Webcam) connected to a MacBook running Gawker. Created two iterations of custom mounts. The first was created out of PVC with holes cut so the head rest of the car’s seat could pass though it. The second was a wooden spoon held to the rearview mirror using a clamp and zip-ties.

Nerd Paper

admin — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:36:48 +0000

Misc. engineering paper just right for printing…

Five Cycle

Five Cycle by 30 Semi-Log

10 Cycle by 30 Cycle Semi-Log