I'm building a controller for my hotplate I use for soldering, I bought it from Aliexpress and it has no cotroller, at the moment I only have an on/off button on the power cord
The working priciple is quite simple, it uses phase cutting to create a delay from when the current is let through the circuit, everithing is controlled by a rotary encoder and the actual value is showed on a 0.96' screen with a bar that fills up according to the value selected (this solution is temporary since when I'll get the components I'll make a better screen interface)