Arduino 6 AI temperature scanner with LCD display

I had a need for a temperature scanner to troubleshoot overheating on my Duramax LB7 pickup while towing. A commercial solution to collect 6 temperatures may have run me over a thousand dollars so I ordered some thermistors and for about 40 bucks in parts made one myself.

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Parts include an Arduino Pro Mini and a Nokia 3310 graphical LCD screen.

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Here is the schematic: Arduino 6 Temperature Scanner

Here is the sketch and LCD library for Arduino: Nokia_Six_Analog_Display

11 thoughts on “Arduino 6 AI temperature scanner with LCD display”

  1. I found your 6 temp arduino project and the schematic link works but the library download will not open, unzipped it but wont show. I like the nokia display better than Jameco’s rewritten version. Thanks.

    • Can you try to download again or possibly try the download on another computer? It worked fine for me, Inside the zip file I have the sample code along with the LCD library I used which was created by Carlos Rodriguez.

      • I re downloaded the file, unzipped it on another computer, same thing. when I get to the unzipped folder I open and get Nokia_Six_Analog_Display.pde then open that and get a windows cannot open this file, windows needs to know what program created it…………I can’t figure out how to go any further. I do not have an arduino yet or any software for that yet. Could that be the problem ?

    • It all had to do with my scaling, I was using a bag of ice water and needed something more stable for the hot end like some hot water instead of my lighter! I am sure there are more scientific ways to scale the thermistors but that’s how I did it. Also you might check out some more precise thermistors. I was scaling from 32 deg F to 200 DEG F, I had the trouble when going to the extremes of the thermistor temperature range. if you don’t need that wide of a range you could get much better scaling, for instance if you were just interested in 50-100 degF (ambient temp) you could easily use the same thermistor and get within one degree.

      Here is the termistor I used (29 cents): http://www.newark.com/epcos/b57891m102j/ntc-thermistor/dp/21C9770

      You might try this sensor: http://adafruit.com/products/165

      The output looks very linear. And there are actual temperature modules you can get from Adafruit or Sparkfun that might be a bit more linear than just a raw thermistor.

    • 9:52 AM

      It looks like the highest temp thermistor I can find is 300degC which is 572F here on Newark It would be a snap to put in the higher temp thermistor.

      I suppose if you need higher temp you will need to use a thermocouple. Thermo couples generate a small voltage instead of changing resistance like a thermistor. I imagine that with some modification the temperature scanner could read a thermocouple. Thermocouples are more expensive but have much higher temperature range.
      Thermocouple

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