Potentiometer and progress!

Now I see why arduinos are so popular. It's really not that hard to program them in simple ways! I just got it to take a reading from the potentiometer, convert that to the desired temp, compare that with the detected temp, and then rotate the servo +5 or -5 degrees per second until they match.

This is significant progress! I'm actually shocked that I've come this far so easily.

Literally, if this were all I had programming-wise, I could make this project work. It wouldn't be ideal -you'd have to go by feel to tell whether you liked the temperature, it would be very slow to rotate, you'd have to turn on the hot water yourself, etc. But it would freaking work! This step-by-step, get-it-working-first-and-add-polish-later approach has worked better than pretty much anything I've ever done. Wow!

So now what? An LED readout so you know the temp you're asking for? Consolidating the circuitry so it's not a bunch of delicately arranged wires that can't be moved from my desk? Making a waterproof housing and actually hooking the thing up to my shower? Finding a power source so I don't have to use the USB cable?

I want to take the straightest route to something that works, so my next steps will be:
- stabilizing the wires so the project can leave my desk without falling apart
- mounting the servo on the shower knob so I can start testing

Stay tuned!!

Just for fun, I'm speculating about one of the steps further down the road once I finish the design and want to stamp out some more of these. What's really cool is that you don't need to pay $30 for more arduinos, nor do you need to pay through the nose for custom-built chips. Instead, you can just buy the same processor chip the arduino uses and a couple components for like $7, and use this procedure coupled with this procedure. Just pop the chip into your existing arduino to program it beforehand. This is a big step in reducing production costs!