HeaterMeter v4.0 for RaspberyPi / Standalone


 
So what is the highest current draw that we can control ? IE will a 20cfm Auber fan work OK ?? They say .39a for their controller AND the 20 cfm fan...I doubt the PID used much of that .39a.
 
From what I see the Auber 20cfm pulls 8W and the control MOSFET in HeaterMeter is good up to 60W. There's a bit of slack needed to account for the Rds(on) of the MOSFET and the lack of a heatsink but I specifically chose that part due to its ability to drive a really high power fan. The question is making sure you have a good enough power supply to be able to kick that fan on and off while not browning out the HeaterMeter / Pi. I've personally driven about 600mA of fans (multiple fans at once) though without seeing any strangeness on the powerlines with the oscilloscope.
 
Bryan Mayland said:
From what I see the Auber 20cfm pulls 8W and the control MOSFET in HeaterMeter is good up to 60W. There's a bit of slack needed to account for the Rds(on) of the MOSFET and the lack of a heatsink but I specifically chose that part due to its ability to drive a really high power fan. The question is making sure you have a good enough power supply to be able to kick that fan on and off while not browning out the HeaterMeter / Pi. I've personally driven about 600mA of fans (multiple fans at once) though without seeing any strangeness on the powerlines with the oscilloscope.
Click to expand...

I was planning on using the same wal wart that I use with the Auber, the fan from Digikey is back ordered, and or may not be big enough for a 55 gallon drum smoker :).
 
I use this one with my UDS.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0025VJEL8/tvwb-20

Is is overkill, so I wouldn't get anything much bigger. I have to close the intake valve on the smoker to about 1/8" of an inch. If I leave it open (my valve is 1-1/2" the smoker stays too hot and the HM does nothing. This blower will blow all the heat out of the smoker at 250F and blows ashes all over as well. I'm sure it would keep it at 600F easily if you want to do pizzas :)

dave

Bill D aka Willbird said:
I was planning on using the same wal wart that I use with the Auber, the fan from Digikey is back ordered, and or may not be big enough for a 55 gallon drum smoker :).
Click to expand...
 
Well being able to control fan SPEED will be interesting, and the Auber fan has a weighted damper too, which might be nice. I have the 20 cfm plumbed right in with 1.5" tube...some people restrict them in creative ways by how they plumb them. I made a washer for my ducting that has a 5/8 hole that I use for sub 300f temps...take it out for higher temps. I left it in last weekend by mistake and could not get over 300f, was scratching my head until I figured that out :).

Just thinking about it, "air smoking" hehe....it would seem that a slower blower speed, with a higher "on" time would give us a nicer smoke than running a huge blower for say 5% of the time.

I have hit 450f with the wide open 1.5" duct/20 cfm fan, and Kingsford Briq...never really tried that with lump charcoal...yet :). Being able to do a self clean at 600 might be nice :).

Bill



D Peart said:
I use this one with my UDS.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0025VJEL8/tvwb-20

Is is overkill, so I wouldn't get anything much bigger. I have to close the intake valve on the smoker to about 1/8" of an inch. If I leave it open (my valve is 1-1/2" the smoker stays too hot and the HM does nothing. This blower will blow all the heat out of the smoker at 250F and blows ashes all over as well. I'm sure it would keep it at 600F easily if you want to do pizzas :)

dave
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I hope I'm not breaking any forum rules by linking to another site, but this may help those who are still looking for way to attach the fan to the WSM. While searching for ways to do just that, I found this www.neverstopsmoking.com/wsmcon.php. It's similar to the one previously posted in this sub forum but provides more details.
 
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All that metal is unnecessary. You can simply connect the fan to the bowl using high temp silicone which you can get at any hardware store. I also suggest using the smallest round bowl you can find...got mine at Goodwill. I have had the temp up just about as hot as you could get it and I have never had any issues with the fan or bowl getting hot.
 
Bill D aka Willbird said:
I was planning on using the same wal wart that I use with the Auber, the fan from Digikey is back ordered, and or may not be big enough for a 55 gallon drum smoker :).
Click to expand...

I use a Delta BFB1012HH(28 cfm) on my UDS. but I turn my 3/4 inch ball valve down to half open and always leave the exhuast fully open.

30 dollars, though.
 
How does one change the port number the pi listens to? I have 2 systems for different smokers, and would like to get to them through a router. I used grep to find the phrase 80, as well as port. My netgear does not allow forwarding port 82 to port a 80 and a different IP (linksys and d-link do).
 
MMatthews said:
How does one change the port number the pi listens to? I have 2 systems for different smokers, and would like to get to them through a router. I used grep to find the phrase 80, as well as port. My netgear does not allow forwarding port 82 to port a 80 and a different IP (linksys and d-link do).
Click to expand...

Are you using wireless on the pi (plural) ?? They would end up with different IP numbers, and I just look up the IP in the web interface for my router ??

KzUjr.jpg


EDIT: maybe you are talking about accessing from outside the home network, which is currently over my head :).

Bill
 
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From the outside. I have an instance where we are doing a demonstration cook in Edmonton, but I also have to coach a playoff football game 2 towns over. I want to keep an eye on things to help the cook team with temps and times. I'll be using my cell router, but as it;s a netgear, it doesn't work with multiple port 80 requests very well.
 
I typically use an external port like 8080, or 8081, then have that port forwarded to the rPi's port 80.

Then you connect to your outside ip address port 8080.

That should work for you just fine.
dave

MMatthews said:
From the outside. I have an instance where we are doing a demonstration cook in Edmonton, but I also have to coach a playoff football game 2 towns over. I want to keep an eye on things to help the cook team with temps and times. I'll be using my cell router, but as it;s a netgear, it doesn't work with multiple port 80 requests very well.
Click to expand...
 
For those going to a bigger fan... just my 2c. I use a 15.3 CFM fan characterized here: http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?34981-Fan-Cooker-thread&p=351583&viewfull=1#post351583

Beware though: On my "average sized" indirect smoker, running the fan fast with that much CFM made for a hot fire, but it was moving all the hot air out of the smoker so fast that it was hard to make heat! I was simply burning up expensive charcoal. I actually had to set the max fan speed down to like 50 or 60% to get it to build good heat in the cook box.

Just keep in mind, your smoker is X amount of CF, so if my smoker is for instance 15 CF, then running at 100% speed for one minute will replace every bit of hot air volume with air from the atmosphere, so the fire will be in charge of heating 15 CFM of air as well. I could probably do that math to work out how many BTU you'd need to heat 15 CF of air by ~140*F, but since these are made up numbers I won't bother. What is important to take away though, is that more air flow = more fuel for a given temperature in the cook zone, so you want the smallest amount of air flow possible to make for good temperature control over the fire, but it is really easy to over-do it and think you need more air and/or more fuel, when really you are just heating the back yard.
 
MMatthews said:
How does one change the port number the pi listens to? I have 2 systems for different smokers, and would like to get to them through a router. I used grep to find the phrase 80, as well as port. My netgear does not allow forwarding port 82 to port a 80 and a different IP (linksys and d-link do).
Click to expand...
You can change the web port with:
uci set lucid.http.address=80
/etc/init.d/lucid restart
(or reboot)

You can also add listening ports in addition to the 80
uci add_list lucid.http.address=80

Obviously replace 80 with whatever port you want.
 
This is exactly what happens to my UDS with the fan I use.

dave
Evan MJ said:
For those going to a bigger fan... just my 2c. I use a 15.3 CFM fan characterized here: http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?34981-Fan-Cooker-thread&p=351583&viewfull=1#post351583

Beware though: On my "average sized" indirect smoker, running the fan fast with that much CFM made for a hot fire, but it was moving all the hot air out of the smoker so fast that it was hard to make heat! I was simply burning up expensive charcoal. I actually had to set the max fan speed down to like 50 or 60% to get it to build good heat in the cook box.

Just keep in mind, your smoker is X amount of CF, so if my smoker is for instance 15 CF, then running at 100% speed for one minute will replace every bit of hot air volume with air from the atmosphere, so the fire will be in charge of heating 15 CFM of air as well. I could probably do that math to work out how many BTU you'd need to heat 15 CF of air by ~140*F, but since these are made up numbers I won't bother. What is important to take away though, is that more air flow = more fuel for a given temperature in the cook zone, so you want the smallest amount of air flow possible to make for good temperature control over the fire, but it is really easy to over-do it and think you need more air and/or more fuel, when really you are just heating the back yard.
Click to expand...
 
A little update on my pit probe not found problem. In order to try and narrow things down some I picked up a mcp1700 / ic4 to make it stand alone. Even without the rpi attached it still has the cannot find pit probe problem. I missed the part in the instructions about not having the 12v and usb connected at the same time. If I did this what part would likely blow?
 
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I am having similar no pit probe problems, even with a probe properly inserted it still says no pit probe. I did manage to get it up and running and can access the thing via a browser but when trying to change things on the config page like the probe, fan speed, etc the button at the bottom that is supposed to be there to push to save those settings is nowhere to be found. the text is there but there is no link or anything to click. I have tried the latest version of openWRT and it is even worse with strange anomolies, I cant even get into most of the tabs on it, it just errors out, when I go back to the previous version that was a previous build it works much better but i still cant seem to get it to save anything as far as settings. Do you suppose this is a hardware issue or software? I may try to update the AVR and see if that helps, where exactly can I find that file?

Also I when using the switch on the board itself to go between menus etc it is very erratic, i have to push the switch several times to get it to do anything, sometimes just a couple pushes will get it to move, sometimes it takes 9 or 10 to get it to go.

I have never had 12V hooked up to it, I have only powered it by the micro USB on the RPi. At this point I am not sure what to do. I am guessing it is probably a hardware issue but have no idea. I have tried 2 different SD cards with the exact same results on each.
 
MMatthews said:
From the outside. I have an instance where we are doing a demonstration cook in Edmonton, but I also have to coach a playoff football game 2 towns over. I want to keep an eye on things to help the cook team with temps and times. I'll be using my cell router, but as it;s a netgear, it doesn't work with multiple port 80 requests very well.
Click to expand...



I use a service called No-ip, so that I can have a web address for an internal Ip(Rpi). For instance I use www.heatermeter.servebeer.com on my phone and it takes me to my heatermeter. All you need is to know the ip for each Rpi and your modems IP address(No-ip will tell you that) and you set up a host for each Rpi. You might have to foward your RPI's ip address in the router, thats pretty simple to do in the routers setup pages.
 
Paul S (Missouri) said:
I did manage to get it up and running and can access the thing via a browser but when trying to change things on the config page like the probe, fan speed, etc the button at the bottom that is supposed to be there to push to save those settings is nowhere to be found. the text is there but there is no link or anything to click. I have tried the latest version of openWRT and it is even worse with strange anomolies, I cant even get into most of the tabs on it, it just errors out, when I go back to the previous version that was a previous build it works much better but i still cant seem to get it to save anything as far as settings. Do you suppose this is a hardware issue or software? I may try to update the AVR and see if that helps, where exactly can I find that file?
Click to expand...
Let's start with this. Are you using the openwrt-rpi.zip from here? I just flashed that to an SD card and booted it up but have no anomalies and all the web page tabs come up fine. Does the LinkMeter config page have all the values filled in or is it just blank? Does the rest of the website work without the HeaterMeter board attached?

I can't imagine what would make the button on the HeaterMeter unresponsive unless the voltages aren't right. Sounds like there's some sort of hardware issue but I have no idea what it could be.
 
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