Summary: | The task is to build a low-cost thermostat and design necessary elements to perform a study on water mixed glucose-impedance at different temperatures and cell growth in a temperature-controlled incubator housing a magnetic field of up to 3 mT. The incubator was designed in solidworks and made to fit petri dishes of two relevant sizes and necessary wiring. The coils designed to extend across the large of the incubator with six turns and a 4A current to yield a sixth of the required magnetic field, as field strength increases linearly with current and turns increasing either of these is advised, and a large enough homogenous field was observed to create a suitable environment for the study. A thermistor, temperature sensitive resistance, was used to get reading and a modified wheatstone bridge was used with a multiplying op-amp to stabilize and improve accuracy of readings. Using an arduino microprocessor utilizing a PID library to calculate the power needed from thermistor readings of ambient temperature and an H-bridge controller by PWM from the Arduino a thermostat capable of driving a peltier-cell was produced capable of raising, lowering and maintaining predefined temperatures.
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