Are they still available


 
D

DylanNC

TVWBB Member
Can you still get the part to build these, mine died. Looking a new one. Any updates looks like its been a while since any posts.
 
I think the raspberry pi became unavailable during COVID and kind of quenched a lot of the activity. Some better commercial units have come out as well. Although The heater meter with the blower / damper is still far superior
 
MartinB said:
I think the raspberry pi became unavailable during COVID and kind of quenched a lot of the activity. Some better commercial units have come out as well. Although The heater meter with the blower / damper is still far superior
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Just my opinion, and no disrespect to anyone, but the complexity of the HeaterMeter has always been its biggest weakness. I've tried hacking at it a few times and always gave up. It's a crazy mix of Arduino, RPi/OpenWRT, Lua, and JavaScript with TX/RX to a microcontroller.

The path forward is a hard fork of the code base to drop OpenWRT/RPi in favor of something like the ESP32. The downside is that ESP32-WROOM modules are a pain in the tuchus to solder, the PCB wifi antenna is fairly meh, the ADC is downright horrible, and the LittleFS filesystem is slow as molasses in the winter.

I've figured out most of the issues (wave soldering a ESP32-S3-WROOM module or PCB headers for the ESP32-DevKit, external u.FL antenna, and using a MAX31855 with thermocouples as opposed to doing ADC). What I don't have a solution for yet is how to make LittleFS more performant (I don't think there's a good answer at the moment, although there is some work being done to hopefully make FFat, which is much more performant than LittleFS, more reliable -- https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/issues/8197) and how to keep the costs under control. The MAX31855 is an expensive piece of kit and OMEGA has a sick stronghold on the thermocouple connector market (again, no good answer at the moment).
 
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RobN said:
Just my opinion, and no disrespect to anyone, but the complexity of the HeaterMeter has always been its biggest weakness. I've tried hacking at it a few times and always gave up. It's a crazy mix of Arduino, RPi/OpenWRT, Lua, and JavaScript with TX/RX to a microcontroller.

The path forward is a hard fork of the code base to drop OpenWRT/RPi in favor of something like the ESP32. The downside is that ESP32-WROOM modules are a pain in the tuchus to solder, the PCB wifi antenna is fairly meh, the ADC is downright horrible, and the LittleFS filesystem is slow as molasses in the winter.

I've figured out most of the issues (wave soldering a ESP32-S3-WROOM module or PCB headers for the ESP32-DevKit, external u.FL antenna, and using a MAX31855 with thermocouples as opposed to doing ADC). What I don't have a solution for yet is how to make LittleFS more performant (I don't think there's a good answer at the moment, although there is some work being done to hopefully make FFat, which is much more performant than LittleFS, more reliable -- https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf/issues/8197) and how to keep the costs under control. The MAX31855 is an expensive piece of kit and OMEGA has a sick stronghold on the thermocouple connector market (again, no good answer at the moment).
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Why is it complex? For the average person, who has never soldered, yes it's a very complicated thing to do, but from what you describe that's not what makes the HM complicated. It's all ready to be loaded onto the Rpi and HM via SD card in a fairly simple process. The instructions, could probably be better and less intimidating, but once you figure it out it's not hard at all. Bryan has it fairly easy now. I could careless about all the different OpenWrt, and Lua plug-ins to get the HM up and running, as Bryran has done a pretty good job and for the most part bug free for many years.

The soldering part of the HM is what keeps people away from the HM. It's to technical for most people. And most who want a BBQ temperature unit want something that's premade and warrantied.

I still make them for people, granted it's not the 4 or 5 per month prior to Covid, but it comes and goes with the seasons. I also do a fair amount of repairs for people. Infact I have one getting sent to me from the UK for repair. I have a possible new HM going to the Netherlands, also. I have made them for people all over the world. I try to make it a simple as possible for them and I try to make plug and play as best as I can.
 
John Bostwick said:
Yes, all the parts are very much available
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I just did a parts check this morning while at work. If you go by the Wiki, alot of the Resistors have been obsolete basically the company that made them is no longer the same company. So, you have use substitute components. The major components are all available, except for the buttons.

Those dam buttons over the years have been a pain, it's one of the reasons we have a 4 button HM as the 5-way button(I still have lots of them, lol) went obsolete and the substitute was not a good replacement. Now, the current button is also obsolete, but you can still find it on Amazon and some other places and there are substitutions available. As for Thermocouple amps, those were a pain to find during Covid
I had to buy pcbs with two Thermocouple amps already soldered on, to get amps. Now, Mouser has plenty of them. Only one other component is obsolete and that's the P-channel mosfet. Mouser has similar p channel also. Cost have gone up over all, though. The price including shipping and all the extras(adapter board) blower, and servo, will cost around $200
 
John Bostwick said:
Why is it complex? For the average person, who has never soldered, yes it's a very complicated thing to do, but from what you describe that's not what makes the HM complicated. It's all ready to be loaded onto the Rpi and HM via SD card in a fairly simple process. The instructions, could probably be better and less intimidating, but once you figure it out it's not hard at all. Bryan has it fairly easy now. I could careless about all the different OpenWrt, and Lua plug-ins to get the HM up and running, as Bryran has done a pretty good job and for the most part bug free for many years.

The soldering part of the HM is what keeps people away from the HM. It's to technical for most people. And most who want a BBQ temperature unit want something that's premade and warrantied.

I still make them for people, granted it's not the 4 or 5 per month prior to Covid, but it comes and goes with the seasons. I also do a fair amount of repairs for people. Infact I have one getting sent to me from the UK for repair. I have a possible new HM going to the Netherlands, also. I have made them for people all over the world. I try to make it a simple as possible for them and I try to make plug and play as best as I can.
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My reply was directed at hardware and software development, basically the next generation of the HeaterMeter. The complexity of physically building a HeaterMeter is not in question.
 
RobN said:
My reply was directed at hardware and software development, basically the next generation of the HeaterMeter. The complexity of physically building a HeaterMeter is not in question.
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Hey Cub fan from New York, how did that happen?
 
RobN said:
I got lost in life and ended up in NY. The only benefit of living here is that it makes it easier to make a trip a year to Citi Field to hex the Mets. :censored:
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So you're from Chicagoland originally I take it. Yeah, the Mets were a lot easier for me to hate when they were in the NL east along with the Cubs.
 
RobN said:
My reply was directed at hardware and software development, basically the next generation of the HeaterMeter. The complexity of physically building a HeaterMeter is not in question.
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Unfortunately, I don't think there will be a version 5 of the HeaterMeter. But, I also don't think it really needs to be updated. I mean what else do we need on the HeaterMeter?
 
I built my first one with no problems, worked great until I let someone borrow it. I built one of the 4.3 and can't seem to get it to work. How much are you charging to build them? I only need the internal parts, I have the case for it, using the Raspberry PI B+
 
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