After a lightning strike destroyed the electronics inside their water boiler, the owners discovered that the temperature sensor, heating element and water pump were still working - and instead of throwing out the whole unit - instead brought it back to life with an Arduino and some external circuitry. After some experimenting they discovered the temperature output levels from the sensor, and then built a system that can then control the boiler, display relevant data on an LCD, control the LCD backlight and more. It's a great example of hacking existing items to bring them back to life.
To read the project narrative, see the schematic and sketch - visit the project page. And for more, we're on twitter and Google+, so follow us for news and product updates as well.
To get started with your own temperature-controlled projects, consider using our TEMP: DS18B20-based temperature sensor module:
... or our HUMID: Humidity and Temperature sensor module based on the popular DHT22 sensor unit. Both modules are fully documented and easy to get started with. These are only two of over a dozen of our sensor and output modules.
