HeaterMeter battle

I’d like to thank everyone for this project. I was tired of my igrill and being at the mercy of the app designers. I stumbled upon this link for a better solution to the igrill. I’ve since built a v4.3 and killed it twice. I’ve been able to bring it back from the dead by using the resources on this forum and the GitHub site without asking for help. The first problem I had was a fan that wouldn’t shut off even though it was set to zero manually and showing 0% on the web page. I had a mosfet bleeding off probably from me shocking the board (static electricity) while I was building the base board. Then after a 14 hour day at work I decided to put everything back together. I put the push button/ lcd board on backwards. When I realized what I had done I had fried a couple of capacitors and the inductor on the base board and the shift register on the lcd board. After I corrected my mess ups, this thing is awesome. I’ve been able to go in and customize the LinkMeter home page and have a couple of successful cooks with it! I’m now in the garage modifying a natural gas burner to distribute the oxygen flow evenly to the bottom of the fire on my 22.5” wsm. I’ll post pics if anyone is interested. Won’t be able to test the air distributor out until this weekend.

That's quite a journey you've been on. I'm pretty surprised about the flipping around of the LCD board, I had no idea it could be so devastating. Looking at the layout I can see that it is probably a pretty bonehead move to have 5V and GND swapped if the board is inserted upside down, where if LCK and GND were swapped on that left connector it would probably be safe. The left connector originally had only 4 pins but I added the 5th so you wouldn't need a 5x1 header and a 4x1 header, and it also adds extra stability to the platform.

Well I'm certainly glad you were able to get it all up and running despite the setbacks, and you've given me something else to consider in future hardware revisions!

I’m happy my mistake has provided something useful lol. The diagnosis for the capitors was pretty easy, they got hot in my hand. I rembered reading in another thread to go ahead and replace the inductor if something happened to the base board. Might not have been necessary but I was already desoldering anyway. I now have marks with a sharpie on the boards to make sure I won’t do this again. The lcd board worked but had no display, I could get blocks by moving the potentiometer. Had all the inputs on one side of the shift register and nothing out. It’s definitely easier to get it right the first time but I learned a lot while fixing it.