I found the inspiration for this project in the book "Open Source Lab" (https://www.elsevier.com/books/open-source-lab/pearce/978-0-12-410462-4) from Joshua M. Pearce (chapter 4.5). I found this project very interesting, but as an engineer, I thought I could improve some elements to make it more precise and smooth. It was, in fact, just a pretext to hack more technology.
I decided to replace the fridge by a peltier cooler, which can, if power supply is reverted, produce heat. This design was, in my humble opinion, a lot better than using resistors, although in practice, the control firmware in the arduino was hard to calibrate because of thermal inertia of the peltier system. I prefer to go at a slow pace rather than always reversing the current and generate a lot of waste heat.
For dehumidification, they were using rechargeable dehumidifiers with a fan blowing air on it (or not). I wanted to go with an electronic device and I found a mini adorable peltier dehumidifer. The only drawback is that it produces heat... I needed to use a bit of hacking programming skills to produce a stable temperature and humidity control knowing that condensation happened too in the cooling phase of the cooler (onto the peltier heatsink) and that the dehumidifier produces heat.
Frédérik Berthiaume
John Forsyth
extremerockets