DON'T BUY IT. At least not yet.
I am helping a guy here in Chapel Hill design a system, and that's the PID he bought. He received it a couple of days ago, only to find out that the description in the listing appears to be wrong on at least one critical point.
Here's the problems with that PID.
(1) The title says "F/C PID", which we took to mean that it was usable in either Fahrenheit or Celsius. However, it appears that the PID is actually Celsius only. That's inconvenient, but not the end of the world.
(2) No where in the written description does it say what the power supply is for the PID. But, the sticker on the side of the PID indicates that the power supply needed is 220V. If you are building a 240V system, then this is not an issue. If you are building a 120V system (like the guy I am helping)..... different story. Now, the guy I am helping bought this same PID from a
different seller for an even better price ($21.50 total), and there was no pic of the sticker in that listing. We had no idea what the power supply was. We asked the seller via ebay messages, and he responded that it could work on 120V. Now that we have the PID, it has the sticker on it indicating a 220V power supply. The guy still insists that it will work on voltages as low as 85V. I am actually inclined to believe him on that, because my PID (a "Tet612") as well as the PIDs from Auber also work on a range from 85V to something like 260V. SO... the voltage might not end up being a problem, but it's something to think about if you are intending to build a 120V system.
(3)
AND THIS IS THE CRITICAL PROBLEM... the listing indicates that it has "Voltage pulse output: 0/12V". This would be an SSR control signal. However, this appears to be totally false. The first clue on this is that the sticker says "OUTPUT RELAY", and not "OUTPUT VOLTAGE PULSE". I found 4 or 5 guys selling this same PID, and one of them had a pretty nice manual for the PID available for dowload. The manual explained the meaning of the "CODE" on the sticker.
The sticker CODE is FK03-M*AN
When you look through the manual I found it decodes this product code as:
F = PID with autotuning (reverse action)
K = K-type thermocouple input only
03 = range of operation is 0*C to 400*C
M = Main Output is a Relay -
this part of the CODE needs to be a "V" for the "0/12V" SSR control to be available
A = alarm #1 is a high deviation alarm
N = alarm #2 is not present
We are exchanging messages with the seller and trying to get him to answer questions, but the one we are dealing has as much of a problem speaking English as I have speaking Chinese, so there is some difficulty here. If I get the thing resolved and the PID actually does work, I will respond here, but as for right now... be wary. This thing has one inconvenience (Celsius only), one potential problem for 120V systems (we will find this out), and one potential deal breaker if the thing can't drive an SSR.