When building a coffee roaster controller there appears to be very few places on the internet that give you any examples of where to go or what sort of things are involved in a controller. You’ll see people connecting random looking electronics to popcorn poppers and more times than not various light switches and wall dimmer switches and little explanation as to why or what is used. Sometimes you see projects by those that have welding and metal fabrication skills and other times someone converts every day objects into BBQ powered drum roasters. Most of these systems connected together are quite manual while others show real skill in automation.
These pages will serve as a list of some of the more useful resources to the DIY coffee roaster and controller that I have found.
DIY Controllers
- Arduino
- PIC32 (coming soon)
- Roasting Concepts for manual and automation (coming soon)
DIY Roasters
- Roaster Project – A commercial scale roaster project by Joe Johnston. While this is overkill for the average home individual you can certainly see a lot of concepts and theory of roasting coffee from the commercial perspective converted into a DIY project even if it ends up still being a commercial DIY project.
- More Coming soon
Software/Tools/Services
- Eagle – Free (Reasonable Limited) and Purchasable versions of a PCB Cad system used by many DIY/Hobby makers.
- Google Sketchup – Free and Low Cost Purchasable versions of a full CAD system. Useful with export script (EagleUp) to visualize circuit boards and to design control panels and cases that fit together.
- EagleUp – Script that links Google’s Sketchup with CadSoft Eagle designed boards allowing you to visualize your completed boards before sending them off for prototyping.
- Ponoko – Service that allows you to design cases and control panels for your projects.
- BatchPCB – Service for low volume runs of circuit board prototypes using actual per board dimensions + per order setup fee
- DorkbotPDX PCB Order – Soon to be OSHPark.com – Inexpensive alternative for PCB prototype runs.
- SeeedStudio – Fusion PCB – Inexpensive PCB service offering , 50 and 100 quantity of various dimension range boards. Includes 5, 10, 15, and 20 cm dimension increments.
- iTead Studio – OpenPCB – Inexpensive PCB prototypes in colors based on a dimension range of board providing 5, 8, or 10 boards as well as small production run pricing options for 50+. Includes 5, 10 and larger than 10 cm dimension increments.
- Ohararp LLC – PCB Stencils
- QT – QT (“Cute”) development platform. This allows cross platform (Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and other fixed or mobile platforms) development of GUI control and monitoring systems.