If you can locate the laptop within 5 meters of USB cable run from the microcontroller, then you can get immediate information over USB from the microcontroller, and potentially control the process, using something easy to develop on. For example, you could program the microcontroller to measure the temperatures over SPI from the RTD amplifier, and print ASCII to a tty over USB on your laptop, which you could just log or read with python to do something more sophisticated. There is a fair chance someone has done all of this already and you can find a howto somewhere on the internet.
Finding the Raspberry Pi Zero W for sale today might be way harder. Before the chip shortage, they were $10 + shipping. Looks like they are going for $35-$50 on ebay. I'm holding on to mine until they hit $200. For microcontrollers, I am a fan of the PJRC Teensy's. The creator of the Teensy is a local. The LC would be completely adequate for doing the SPI/Serial translation: https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensylc.html On Thu, Aug 11, 2022 at 4:01 PM Rich Shepard <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Thu, 11 Aug 2022, Russell Senior wrote: > > > How often do you roast, and can you afford to dedicate a laptop to the > > process during roasting times? > > Russell, > > Generally once per week. Yes, I can put my laptop on the stove top (it's > off) when I'm roasting. Would this allow an Ethernet or USB connection that > would be easier to implement than wifi? > > Rich
