I’d say the main benefits would be integration, both of hardware and software. on the hardware getting everything together like this can take a while. (the thermocouple chip can be a particular pain in the butt.)
on the software side, we’re looking at a fairly slick onboard ui (I’m biased of course,) autotune / setpoint profile integration, and a java (ok, processing, but still) front-end.
ultimately you can make something like this on your own, and it would probably be a fun learning experience. the goal here (other than just seeing if we could pull it off,) was to remove most of the pid work from the customer’s hands, while leaving it open so they could add anything else they wanted.
