The “incubator” we’re using at the bosslab is really an oven. Instead of temperature gradations on its control knob, it just has 5 numbers, “1-5”. With some trial and error we’ve got it set to a temperature between 28 C and 40 C.
But I wanted to see how responsive the temperature control system in the oven incubator is, so I set up a simple data-logger to record the temperatures inside it.
A Dallas Instruments temperature sensor (DS18B20) is hooked up to an arduino, which sends the temperature measurement once a second to a computer via “serial”. A processing sketch on the computer uploads the data to Pachube.
Here’re two dynamic graphs of the temperature data stream from pachube. (a dotted line indicates a data failure; probably because the computer was shut off, fell of the network, processing stalled… etc).
As you can see, the values oscillate on a roughly hourly cycle over a range of about 10 degrees C. I wonder how that affects the growth of E. coli… hmmm.
