This Ones a Head Scratcher


 
Rich Dahl

Rich Dahl

TVWBB 1-Star Olympian
As some of you know I've had my issues with Thermoworks on a few of their products. I will say their customer service has always been one step above. Which I appreciate, so before I drop this one on them, I thought I would run it by the forum to see what our experts think.
I just replaced the controller in my Camp Chef to a non Wi-Fi PID controller. I cooked up two whole chickens as a test to make sure it was working correctly. Set it at smoke 1 and 325 temp, it fired right up and settled down according to the controller around 320 - 335 and stayed steady. Just to see how accurate it was I hooked up my Thermoworks smoke and put the grill probe right next to the Camp Chefs probe. I was shocked to see a reading of 420. It was the original smoke probe, so I changed it out with one of the new spares I had, same reading. Tried a third probe and changed ports in the smoke same thing.
The chickens took about two hours to reach 165 internal which was about right for the 325 setting.
The only thing I can think is the fan moving the hot air around confuses the probe.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. I'm confident that the CC is working correctly but I still would like to be able to monitor remotely without an APP.
FYI the meat probe worked just fine.
 
Honestly Rich, yeah there are some reasons I'm unhappy with the Smoke, but accuracy isn't one of them. I've used it in conjunction with both the actual sensor on the grill(s), and along side the TempSpike(s) both of those at once as well. And they're all been within hand grenades and horseshoes of each other. Obviously not "spot on" but within what I call reasonable tolerance for such inexact stuff. Do you have any other probe you can try?
 
Definitely do the test to see what it is.

I’ve had probes just fail, but never off on accuracy. I’d have more faith in Thermoworks on temp
 
TimA said:
Definitely do the test to see what it is.

I’ve had probes just fail, but never off on accuracy. I’d have more faith in Thermoworks on temp
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Did the boiling water test and it came up at 202 - 203 on all three probes, which is correct for our 5100 ft. altitude.
So that's not it.
I agree on the accuracy of TW, but if the temps had really been 400+ the chickens would have after two hours been crispy critters and they were not, the chickens were perfectly cooked.
The response from TW was they didn't have a clue why.
 
DanHoo said:
Test it in a wall oven?
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Not a bad idea Dan, our oven also has convection as an option. Run it on the regular oven cycle that change it to the convection and see if it goes nuts then with the fan running.
I'll try it tomorrow.
Thanks.
 
How long did you keep your Smoke temp probe in the grill for testing? Was it less than first 30 minutes or was one of your probes left in for duration of cook?
It’s possible that the probe placement you were using was catching a hotter air current in the grill and it would fluctuate more or less with grill fan speed.
 
Was just thinking, I have noticed, the Smoke is much quicker reacting than the internal sensor on the grill. I think that is by design. And I have noticed when I am using the Smoke ambient sensor, I occasionally will see readings much higher than "indicated" readings. But, it's only during certain "cycles". I.E. when the grill is "coming back up". Example, if I open the lid or during the power up cycles. On the Smoke I find it will occasionally "over shoot" by quite a bit (sometimes 100deg or more) but usually (well always actually) it will "settle" and everything will be within 15deg "agreement".
I never worried about it. I've seen this on both pellet grills. Just chalked it up to how the PID is "programmed" and the higher speed of the Smoke in comparison to the RTD probe in the grills. Never say any ill effects. Food always cooks perfectly.
BTW I've seen this same thing (though to a lesser extent) from these new TempSpike probes I picked up.
Once I figured out what was happening I shrugged it off.
 
Darian Hofer said:
How long did you keep your Smoke temp probe in the grill for testing? Was it less than first 30 minutes or was one of your probes left in for duration of cook?
It’s possible that the probe placement you were using was catching a hotter air current in the grill and it would fluctuate more or less with grill fan speed.
Click to expand...
The probe was placed right next to the grills probe. There was very little fluctuating, and it was reading almost 100 degrees hotter than the grills temp. The temp swing was about the same as the grills reading. Probe was in the grill for the whole cook.
Going to try Dans suggestion, then drag out my antique Maverick and see what it does.
 
I'm not an expert but I'm gonna reply anyway.

First, I think Dan offered a great idea and it will be interesting to see your results. This is speculative, but 1) I'm persuaded that our pellet grills' thermometers have a slow refresh rate and, therefore, may report inaccurate temperatures at times 2) because of the air movement and temp fluctuations in the pit it would not surprise me if an algorithm is employed whereby a calculation is performed to report what the Engineers feel is an average temp throughout the pit.

If those assumptions could be somewhat true then perhaps it's possible the pit truly was 420 at that tiny real estate region.
 
Oh, I think it is absolutely true and I sort of stated that much as well. It's something I've actually observed in my own 2 pellet grills. Operating a pellet grill is sort of like trying to operate a large boat in the ocean. They do what they're told but not like a small speedboat. They take their time
 
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