About to build a HM 4.1

I am about to order all the parts and components later this week to build my HM 4.1, but first have a few questions.

This will be going onto a UDS. What is the best way that people have found to attach the blower to the intake pipe? Are many other people using them on a UDS?

About what are the overall dimensions for the completed build? I just want to know so I can find a decent enclosure.

I have done a fair bit of reading but are there any updates or recommended mods or anything that people are doing that I should consider that are not included in the wiki?

Take look further down the page at the thread "a look back at the hm from a beginner" although you can make it a lot smaller I basically got some aluminum at homedepot and and then some aluminum tape. Then added a pipe at the end that can slip on and off on the ball valve easily. I been using that for over 3 years now.

The size of the complete hm & pi is about size of my note 2, lol. You can get a case for it 3d printed for.

John Bostwick said:

Take look further down the page at the thread "a look back at the hm from a beginner" although you can make it a lot smaller I basically got some aluminum at homedepot and and then some aluminum tape. Then added a pipe at the end that can slip on and off on the ball valve easily. I been using that for over 3 years now.

The size of the complete hm & pi is about size of my note 2, lol. You can get a case for it 3d printed for.

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Thanks. I remember looking at that thread but must have overlooked that part.

And I have seen the 3D printed ones but at this point I am looking to keep the cost down. I would probably switch over to that later on though.

And have you had any problems with runaway temps in the UDS at all?

I think Matt and Tom's smallest 3D printed case is roughly 4.5" wide, 4" tall and 1.5" deep, I don't have the loose boards on hand to actually measure them independently.

One suggestion I can make before ordering parts, you might want to beef up the power supply a bit. Originally a 12VDC 1A supply was suggested (not sure if Bryan beefed that up in the v4.1 BOM or not), I would suggest you order a 2A or higher power supply. If you look around it should only cost a buck or two to get a little more juice in your power supply. I have also heard people report they have better luck with the transformer style PS as opposed to the modern lightweight switching mode supplies. I run a 2A switching mode supply and have had no problems however. The blower, display and rPi will draw a fair amount of current, if you ever decide to run a larger blower or add a servo damper you may get brown outs if you're running a smaller PS.

If you are making your own case you might want to order some right angle header pins so you can connect the display with lower profile to a ribbon cable, which might make mounting your display and hm boards to your case easier.

RalphTrimble said:

I think Matt and Tom's smallest 3D printed case is roughly 4.5" wide, 4" tall and 1.5" deep, I don't have the loose boards on hand to actually measure them independantly.
One suggestion I can make before ordering parts, you might want to beef up the power supply a bit. Originally a 12VDC 1A supply was suggested (not sure if Bryan beefed that up in the v4.1 BOM or not), I would suggest you order a 2A or higher power supply. If you look around it should only cost a buck or two to get a little more juice in your power supply. I have also heard people report they have better luck with the transformer style PS as opposed to the modern lightweight switching mode supplies. I run a 2A switching mode supply and have had no problems however. The blower, display and rPi will draw a fair amount of current, if you ever decide to run a larger blower or add a servo damper you may get brown outs if you're running a smaller PS.

Click to expand...

I have read that about the PS. I have a couple boxes at home of PS's and was just going to dig through that and hope I found an appropriate one. I am sure I have something in there 12v and around 2A. If not I have amazon prime so I can have it fast and free.

I forgot I also use a much bigger blower(I don't have the part#, at work) but I never run it above 30% as it would lend a cooling effect and then a overshoot of set temp.

The hm works great on the UDS. It does take some tinkering with getting the ball valve set correctly. As you want the UDS set to not be able to hold temp, so that the hm will have the control to keep the temp at set point.

HeaterMeter on a UDS

Hi Mike,

I just built a v4.0 HeaterMeter for my UDS and had it's maiden voyage over the weekend. I am very happy with the results. It held 225 plus or minus 5-10 degrees for 17+ hours on ~15lbs of Cowboy lump. I did similar as John and wrapped the outside of the fan with aluminum and attached it to a a 5 inch section of 3/4 pipe with Reflectix tape, then into a 45 deg angle, and finally into the 3/4 in ball valve I already had on the UDS. In hind-sight the tape alone would probably be enough.

For my first run, I wanted a baseline/control, so closed off all inlets but the ball valve and set it wide open. I also left the default PID settings B-4, P-3, I-0.005, D-10. I definitely have some tuning to do (any help/insight is appreciated). Here is my graph:



Notes:
- The spike in the HeaterMeter temp was when the sun hit my black case in the AM. I put it in the shade and it went back down.
- After 15 hours of cooking the Shoulder and slowing climb I was afraid it would not finish for dinner, so I foil crunched it. It is pretty cool to see the effect, it shot right up

I found this http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?40110-Heatermeter-on-UDS-my-PID-settings post on UDS PID tuning and plan to do some tinkering on my next run. I am going to start by closing the valve some so that it can maintain a higher fan speed and not turn off to see how the algorithm is truly running. I am also going to watch the PID diagnostic panel and see what information I can gather.

Thanks to all Brian's hard work and all the helpful people in the forum, this has been a very enjoyable and rewarding project.

Thank you very much Matt. I really appreciate that.

I took my blower apart to make sure I got the correct model. I use a BFB1012HH its a 97.2X94.4X33MM, 28.25 max CFM, 1.1amp, rated input power 13.20, rated current 1.5a. I usually run it no more then 30%, anything higher I get a cooling effect. It has worked great for almost 4 years in all kinds of weather from rain to snow.

BFB1012HH

Here is a pict of my UDS blower and I just happen to have something to compare the size of it, lol. Its much bigger then the stock fan.

I have a HM 4.0 running on a UDS. I have had pretty good success with it but it did still require more fiddling with the valves than I really wanted. I built one of Ralph's rotodampers and that has cured the over / under shoot problems I was having.

I found if I left one 3/4" ball valve fully open, the UDS would draft enough air through the valve to over heat even when the fan was off. My goal was to run the smoker through the night without needing to get up and tweak it several times... I have that now with the HM and Rotodamper.

I will add my PID settings to the UDS thread the next time I smoke something... I did find that it worked best to have the damper fully open or closed. My UDS temp oscillated a lot and the fan ran at 100% frequently when I tried proportional mode.

I use an extremely large fan as well, because that is what I already had. It is way over powered for the UDS. I run it at a max speed of 10%.

I didn't fix my overshoot issues until I hooked up my damper controller. With that, it runs great all day long. I smoked a 16 pound brisket over the weekend without any issues at all. It is truly set and forget now.

dave