Sous Vide water baths are widely used in the world's top restaurants for their consistency and the textures they allow food to achieve. However, most sous vide machines cost hundreds of dollars.
This has been an on and off personal project for a few years, and I plan to continue to iterate and improve it in the future. For example, I am working on allowing the user to select the food and temperature and the machine will calculate how long it needs to cook to reach doneness. Similarly, a water level sensor could detect the change in volume and estimate the geometry of the piece of food, improving time estimations.
I used an Arduino Uno as the main logic board, and connected a thermocouple, high voltage power relay, and lcd user interface with menu buttons. The user selects the desired temperature, and the Arduino uses my PID algorithm to pulse the rice cooker on or off based on the measured temperature value compared to the desired temperature value.
Enclosure prototypes from left to right: first attempt cardboard, improved cardboard, and the final masonite/clear acrylic hybrid.
Electronics prior to assembly into the enclosure.
The sous vide system in an early form.
