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How can I heat something up? How can I cool something? Controlling the temperature of a substance is fundamental to automation. Most buildings have thermostats and a heating & cooling unit. Products like Nest automate that hard job. But what about smaller requirements?

There are small-scale heating and cooling needs but not a great deal has been written to show Makers how to provide temperature control. This guide will show you some techniques for heating something up and cooling something down, along with methods to monitor the temperatures.

This work will be done by two Adafruit products: the Circuit Playground Express microcontroller and the Crickit add-on controller to provide the interface between digital signals and analog devices.

Heating things up and cooling things down can cause the potential for burns or numbing cold. Please be sure to protect surfaces and the potential for hands to not touch heated/cooled surfaces.

Parts

1 x Circuit Playground Express
Circuit Playground Express is the next step towards a perfect introduction to electronics and programming.
1 x Adafruit CRICKIT for Circuit Playground Express
Our Creative Robotics & Interactive Construction Kit. It's an add-on to our popular Circuit Playground Express
1 x Electric Heating Pad - 10cm x 5cm
This is hot! Literally! Apply 5-12VDC and the stainless steel fibers in this heating fabric will warm up, creating a little heating pad.
1 x Peltier Thermo-Electric Cooler Module - 5V 1A
Apply 5V to the red (positive) and black (negative) wires and one side will get cold while the other side gets hot.
1 x TMP36 - Analog Temperature sensor
Wide range, low power temperature sensor outputs an analog voltage
1 x Panel Mount 10K potentiometer
Breadboard Friendly - 10K Linear
1 x Potentiometer Knob
Soft Touch T18 - Red
1 x Small Alligator Clip to Male Jumper Wire Bundle - 12 Pieces
These cables will be your best friends! No longer will you have long strands of alligator clips that are grabbing extension wires.
1 x Short Wire Alligator Clip Test Lead (set of 12)
These are shorter - if you need longer, order the longer "small alligator clip" bundles.
1 x Female DC Power adapter - 2.1mm jack to screw terminal block
Connect a DC power wall wart to a board that doesn't have a DC jack.

This guide was first published on Sep 11, 2018. It was last updated on Mar 18, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

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