Sunday, December 6, 2015

Wifi Humidor Intro

I recently started getting back into cigar smoking again. I started smoking cigars about 20 years ago. I’ve always enjoyed smoking a fine cigar but for some reason I have an on again off again relationship with them.
One cold winter day  I was sitting around in a cigar lounge having my first cigar in many years. I was enjoying this particular cigar with a bunch of friends. I remember having a Boneshaker with mine. It paired surprisingly well with what I was smoking at the time.
We started discussing the various cigars we’ve smoked in the past and what we currently had in our humidors. I started talking about a box of Montecristo No. 2’s my sister got for me a while ago and that they were probably all dried out… when it suddenly dawned on me why I had such a complicated affair with cigars. The reason was I would always forget to “recharge” my humidification device on a regular basis and my cigars would dry out and then I’d just leave them for dead.
My friends and I began to wonder what types of products were out there to solve such a serious problem as this. Apparently what we were looking for was something called an “active” humidification system. To my surprise there were plenty. The Cigar Oasis XL seemed to be pretty popular at the time. The only problem was some solutions were super high-end and way out of my price range. The solutions that were reasonably priced seemed cheaply made and only had rudimentary features. Some had optional features but cost a lot more money for something we thought should be baked in. And some were larger than my humidor.
To put things into perspective I probably smoke 1 or 2 cigars a week. I have a desktop humidor that holds about 200 cigars.  So I’m not looking for a humidification system that will cost more than my humidor itself. 
And so there was only one option. I started working on my own "active" humidification system using some things that I already had lying around. The heart of the system would be a Raspberry Pi.

My next post will include my parts list, screenshots of the web and iPhone interfaces as well as some photos of what I have done so far.

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