So, I am a young and broke student (broke being relative of course, I can't complain compared to fellow students, but metrology isn't exactly the cheapest of hobbies...).
I am currently in the process of designing my own voltage source. For me this was a good project since when repairing multimeters that need calibration, I often require something like a 1 mV voltage, and generating that with a bench supply is tedious at best.
It has also been a learning experience for me to discover computer controlled instrumentation. My core meter is a Keithley 2000. I have no real references to compare this too, so for now it will have to do.
One of the things I want to try is measure the temperature coefficient of my board. I can see that if I make it very warm, it goes up by about 1/2 LSB (meter measuring it is not being heated up). However, I don't have any way to measure how warm I am making the system, so the next thing I need to get a real idea of the temperature coefficient is a way to measure said temperature.
This brings me to my question: What are some good entry points to do reasonably accurate temperature measurements? I don't need crazy precision or accuracy, as it will mainly be relative measurements, and I can't control the temperature that precisely anyways (the way I currently do the heating is by just having two big power resistors in the same box as the DUT, and then pumping 5/10 W into those). My requirement is that I can easily log this with my matlab code. USB would be nice, but I am willing to spend the extra few bucks on another USB-to-Serial converter. I don't have GPIB yet, though I am looking at it in the long run. Most of the logging devices I find on ebay etc are for use with cards, and ofcourse don't come with the cards (so the cost of entry is quite high).