I am not an electrician so do not build this if you are not either!! I have done alot of electrical work and work in the electrical world! (disclaimer so i cant be sued for my vast riches!! Yeah right!!)
On with the pics and stuff.
I used a 6" X 6" electrical box for the housing. Cut out holes for the switch, outlet, pid, heat sink, and thermocouple adapter.

Here is the front of the box with the pid controller installed.

Top view of the completed unit.

A switch to turn off the entire system.

Outlet controlled by the pid. And below that a disconnect for the thermocouple so the unit can be disconnected. And it can be used for other kettles and stuff. Easy to disconnect to clean kettles also.

Rear view. Power cord to plug into a large cord. And a massive heat sink to keep things cool. I used a 110-240 volt ssr so it would be ran at a minimal rate and i could use a bigger heat sink. Plus i can upgrade to 220 volts if i need to.

Link to my site if you want bigger pics or anything. I will go into more detail later if anybody is interested. This will be used to control a water heater element in my HLT for starters.

Sorry for my naivete, but I'm lost. What's a "pid"? I don't follow what all is going on there..but as a gadget-guy, I'm intrigued!

A pid is basically a fancy thermostat. This model will control heating or cooling and is very acurate.
What this thing i built will do is controll a water heater element in my HLT or brew kettle. So it has a thermocouple probe that will be in the kettle. So it will sense the temp. And i can set it to whatever temp i want on the pid. It has a lcd display that shows the actual temp and your set temp.
The plan is to be able to put it on a timer hooked to my HLT and have it come on an hour or 2 before i plan to brew. Then when i am ready to brew my strike water will be ready to go all by itself.
Basically some automation to my all grain setup.

Neat!