Many years ago, I bought myself an Arduino microcontroller kit with high expectations of building something. Also, for years, it sat idle in a box in my basement. While cleaning up months ago, I got rid of a lot of my parts, but somehow kept the controller and a few extras. This was relatively smart, as part of my mental rehab is to (re)learn many new things. I guess finding the microcontroller was a sign to relearn how to use it and maybe build something.

There are so many projects out there, but I figured, "Why not combine interests? Let's cook with something I can control." The search began, and I found a schematic for an Arduino Smoker Controller. Now, having no idea what I was doing, all I had to go on was the description on the website, the schematic itself, and Mr. Hartley's code/sketch.

My non-engineering self understood the code, but the schematic was extremely foreign to me. What's a geek to do? Figure it out! But how? I didn't have all the parts needed! That's where TinkerCAD comes in handy!

I started out with TinkerCAD by doing some of the tutorials that are on the Arduino website so that I could see how to properly match the wiring with the code. An example was Arduino Starter Kit Project # 8 - Digital Hourglass

From here, I had a good base to work with. Part II will show what I came up with for the smoker.