An oddball / unique question

So my buddy just opened up a little restaurant in which he has two electric, pellet hopper style Yoder Smokers on comp carts. The Yoders do their own temperature control obviously, but in the past, he's had a few instances of say the power going out (causing temps to drop), or a fat flare up (causing temps to rise) ruining his overnight cooks and in turn affecting his next day's trade.

So I was explaining the Heatermeter to him, and telling him he could monitor up to 3 meats in each smoker and the smoker temp, with alarm scripts for all that could email him alarms (with his Android phone set to notify with alarm upon email receipt from certain addresses). He only lives 5min from the restaurant, so this could be an absolute life saver for him.

But it got me thinking, does he really need 2x Heatermeters? I mean he times his cooks so they're ready while he's at the restaurant, so the meat probes aren't necessarily as important as the pit probes. Is it possible to have a Heatermeter monitor two pits with thermocouples, or would that require complete hardware redesign? Is it simply a matter of biting the bullet and building two HMs to do the job properly?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions

If all he wants to do is monitor 2 or 4 probes and alert on them, a single heatermeter can do that. If he's looking to use the control functionality, you can only control 1 pit at a time.

All probes could be thermocouples, it's just not an "out of the box" option on the current PCB, but you can add more thermocouple amps and associated resistors and caps for it.

Since the pit temps are in the "smoking" range, using thermistor probes for the pit would be fine.

Thanks for the reply Steve. Indeed the control side of things would not be required, only the monitoring.

Good idea re: thermistors due to low temp, though I'm inclined to suggest thermocouples are better if there was to be an extended flare-up, a thermistor would die fairly quickly?

I see Auber list Heatermeters for sale on their page, and one of the options is for 2x TC + 1x Thermistor. Is this a standard PCB option available? This would allow him to monitor both pits and one meat of his choice.

The Auber model with 2 x TC is unique to Auber and would probably be the most turn-key solution for your needs.

You could also build a couple RDTC boards and use one for each thermocouple, to have up to four TC probes on one standard HM.

I like this idea. My only concern is how to house them as there will be no RD on each smoker.

You could simply "fly" them, meaning no case, or put them in some small plastic container of any sort. Or I have a back that slides onto the RDTC control box that will close it off so it can be used as a small standalone RDTC box (minus the RD)

You'd have to do some mods to the wiring, but I would suggest with two smokers you use a TC Pit Probe HM on one, putting the TC in the pit and one standard probe in one meat, then use an RDTC board on the other smoker, put the TC in the pit and one standard probe in one meat. This way you get to monitor the pit and one meat in each smoker.

Keep it simple. Buy the Auber unit and if needs expands to actually control 2 pits and not just monitor them, buy/build a 2nd HM.

That is if both units are close enough to plug a TC into the same HM... RDTC would allow the second pit to be a good distance away.

You can make really long TC probes. That's one of the advantages of having a TC amp. If this is for his friends business, I'd suggest the most straightforward, least amount of mods requires approach.

I'm just presenting available options. I don't build RDTC boards or anything so I have no reason to push one way or another. I do know the RDTC board would be very easy to wire up to make this happen and would be very reliable once in place.