Yes that&#x27;s it, the hot plate is being used as a normal hot plate, but its power is being controlled by the thermocouple.<p>The pump is used as is, fully submersed in the water with no tubes.  All it does is agitate the water to make the heating more evenly dispersed.<p>Your setup looks good, I was going to buy a similar control unit to yours until I found the Willhi version that just used regular outlets.  The thing with this box is you have to do a little bit of wiring work to set it up. Turned out to be cheaper for me to buy the already assembled outlet version than the components for it.<p>I think you can already find tutorials online about people connecting this non-outlet style of thermocouple to a slow cooker to make a sous vide.  That was my original plan until I sleuthed out this cheaper design.  So check those tutorials out.<p>The best thing about sous vide is that you can &quot;set it and forget it&quot;, you should thoroughly leave it unattended because it&#x27;s so amazingly convenient.