Yes that's it, the hot plate is being used as a normal hot plate, but its power is being controlled by the thermocouple. The pump is used as is, fully submerse

Yes that's it, the hot plate is being used as a normal hot plate, but its power is being controlled by the thermocouple. 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. 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. 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. The best thing about sous vide is that you can "set it and forget it", you should thoroughly leave it unattended because it's so amazingly convenient.