Heating & Cooling Temperature Controller

I bought my first Inkbird ITC 308 about a year ago after reading multiple recommendations on the home brewing forums and I put it to use controlling the temperature of my fermentation chamber (a converted fridge). It worked so well - basically you 'set it and forget it' - that I've bought a second unit to handle temperature control in my dispensing cabinet (kegerator) build.FEATURESThe idea of the Inkbird is really simple to understand. You enter the temperature you want it to maintain and you place the probe somewhere for it to measure that temperature. You enter the lowest that you're willing to tolerate the temperature being off by and if the measured temperature falls below that point it will activate the socket marked 'heating' until the measured temperature reaches your ideal point. Similarly you enter the highest temperature you want to tolerate and if the measured temperature breaches it then it will activate the socket marked 'cooling'.All you need to do is plug a heating device into the socket marked heating and a cooling device (e.g. a fridge, freezer) into the socket marked cooling. It is not mandatory to have both plugged in at the same time, for example I don't need cooling in the depths of winter so I just plug the heater in.The Inkbird has a safety feature that allows you to specify the minimum time between activating the cooling socket. Fridges and freezers can be damaged if their compressors are cycled too quickly. This feature prevents such damage, and in the event of power loss it will assume that cooling was previously on and will not reactivate it until the safety time has run down - nice.Another nice feature is that it has a buzzer alarm for high and low temperature thresholds in case your heater gets stuck on I guess. I've never used that. You can also calibrate the thermistor probe by entering an offset if you find that it drifts over time.ACCURACYI have an ETI thermocouple with recent calibration certificate that I compared my ITC 308 units to. The first one was only 0.1C off, the second one was 0.2C off. Those differences are within the margin of error of the probes. That's rather impressive and of course once I'd entered the offset into the ITC 308's calibration feature the difference was zero.EASE OF USEHold down SET. Cycle through the different options using up/down to enter the numbers. Hold down SET when you're done. All settings are remembered when the power is cut.PROBE CABLE LENGTH2 metres.BUILD QUALITYIt feels very tightly put together. All cables have tough rubber strain reliefs at the exit from the unit. There's a handy screw/cable-tie hole at the top. The plug is UK 3-pin.WARRANTY12 monthsTIPSUse the lowest power heater you can get away with. If it's too powerful you'll get overshoot as the heater will still be hot long after the power has been cut. Try to measure what it is you want to control rather than the air around it. Again this will avoid constant cycling as the air changes temperature rapidly before whatever it is you're trying to monitor 'catches up'.SUMMARYI'm super happy with mine; I guess I must be if I came back for a second one and I echo the positive comments that the other home brewers are saying about the ITC 308.

We've struggled to create a safe, comfortable climate for our crested gecko, but this temperature controller has finally done it! Easy to program & read, and working well at keeping the terrarium between 23-27C when combined with our infrared heat lamp.

This was purchased to replace an old analogue type thermostat on a commercial food heater.However, to install the controller, the output sockets needed to be inside the cabinet so it meant having to disassemble the socket so that the cable could be passed through a cable gland in the panel.This required some desoldering and resoldering which was not an issue, however, whilst the item was apart, one of the plug prong recepticles just fell out (photo attached) it was supposed to be soldered onto the board but the solder had never been touched. I wouldn't like to say whether or not the recepticle was making enough contact with the board for it to be safe, but we had to solder it into place to be on the safe side.Anyway, after it was put back together and fully installed, it is working perfectly and the food warmer is maintaining a very accurate and consistent temperature all day long now.

The Inkbird 308 is an easy to use, plug in and go temperature controller that I got to supplement my current STC-1000 controller. I use both for home brewing, either holding a fermentation fridge at the right temperature, bringing strike water up to temperature or cold crashing.It has a few advantages over the STC,a) You can see the current temperature and the desired temperature at the same time. A few times I've used my STC to get strike water for the mash ready, then forgot to drop it down to mash temperature and basically killed the mash.b) It's easier to program than the STC and it can be done with one hand. The STC requires you to hold down one button while pressing another while changing settings - I know a brewer that has a problem with one of their hands that can't program the STC. The settings are also abbreviated to letters, e.g. ts for temperature set rather than just numbers 1 to 4.c) You can set the differential from the temperature you want separately for heating and cooling which really is great if your heating or cooling system causes swings. You might want it to start heating when the temperature is half a degree below your required temperature, but not want a cooler to kick in until it's 4 or 5 degrees over - the STC doesn't let you do that.d) The quality of the temperature probe wire is much more rugged and twice the length of my STC probe's and the replacement I bought. This may be because I bought a knock-off STC. I stick the probe to my fermenter under a wadge of blu-tak and just with reasonable flexing the wire shielding split next to the sensor. I didn't notice this and humidity got into the split and caused changes in resistance meaning I had to recalibrate it all the time. I thought the STC itself was broken before I tracked it down.e) It has a high and low alarm feature which I find useful when doing a mash. I don't have a good mash tun so I set the low alarm to 65c and when it goes off it lets me know to add a bit of hot water.f) It's plug and play! You won't run the risk of electricuting everybody by not knowing how to wire it up.g) It's plug and play #2! You won't risk eye and limb damage trying to Dremel out an aluminium hard drive enclosure to fit it into and all the sockets. Seriously, the sparks burnt my decent jumper when I made my STC enclosure, and the number of disks I went through was shocking.In the picture I've got them lying together but actually have the 308 and sockets mounted on the wall and it feels really solid.Overall even though it does the same job as my STC-1000 it does it slightly better and I sort of trust it more.

Bought as a matter of urgency when we took on a baby ‘rescue’ tortoise abandoned by its owners.Simple night and day temperature settings with convenient hook to hang behind vivarium. Tortoise now thankfully thriving . Great value and quick shipping .