💡 Electron Parade ☀️ 🌙

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You think you’re a responsible adult until you realize you’ve stuffed your woodstove so full of dry oak that it’s glowing the exact color of a supernova. We’ve all been there. You sit on the couch, sweating profusely, wondering if the magic blue smoke is going to come from your breadboard or your actual living room walls.

Instead of relying on anxiety and a cheap magnetic thermometer that fell behind the stove three years ago, let’s overengineer a solution. Today, we are building a Wi-Fi connected Smart Woodstove Assistant that will actively monitor the flue temperature and scream at you if things get out of hand.

The Brains and the Brawn

To pull this off, we are using an ESP32 Development Board. It has built-in Wi-Fi, which means we can log our temperatures and check them from the couch.

But you can’t just tape a standard TMP36 sensor to a 600-degree cast-iron stove. It will melt into a sad puddle of plastic and regret. We need a heavy-duty K-Type Thermocouple. Specifically, we’ll use the MAX6675 Thermocouple Module, which can read temperatures up to a blistering 1024°C (1875°F).

The Build

1. Connect the MAX6675: This module uses SPI communication. Connect VCC to 3.3V, GND to GND, SCK to D18, CS to D15, and SO to D19 on your ESP32.
2. Add an Alarm: We want an audible warning if the stove over-fires. Grab a Piezo Buzzer (refer to Lesson 124 if you forgot how these work) and wire it to pin D4.
3. The Code: We’ll write a sketch that reads the MAX6675 every 5 seconds. If the temperature drops below 200°F, the web dashboard will remind you to add wood. If it crosses 600°F, the piezo buzzer will initiate a localized air raid siren to let you know you’ve created a blast furnace.

This project is the perfect marriage of 19th-century heating and 21st-century paranoia. Stay safe!