Initial Power Up, some issues, eventual SUCCESS!


 

RalphTrimble

TVWBB Diamond Member
Got all the parts in today to build my HeaterMeter v4 connected to a Raspberry Pi and so I built up the HM board...

First power up was rocky, was getting solid red and yellow LED's and nothing on the Display, if I cranked the contrast all the way one line of the Display would glow, which made me worry a bit. I thought perhaps since I have a blank Atmel chip in there this might be OK? (deep down I was not so confident) So I plug the HM into the Raspberry Pi and power up, same situation on the HM LED and Display, I wait a few minutes crossing fingers that it was flashing the Atmel, no such luck.

So I plug the rPi into a monitor, it seems to boot but halts at: mounted filesystem without journal I search the forum and find this thread, http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?406...hing-HM4&highlight=mounted+filesystem+journal which tells me this is actually a normal boot for the rPi. So I power down, plug a keyboard to the rPi and boot as above, when I hit the ENTER key I get the console so the rPi seems to be working fine.

Handling the HM unit I noticed the LED's went off, and back on, I figured this must indicate bad solder joints somewhere. So I inspect the board (again) and find no bridging or shorts, but did notice that solder didn't flow well to the component side of the board on the IC chip and IC socket (I went kinda light on my initial solder cause I didn't want to over heat them). I figured the two sided board needs solder to flow to both sides so I re-soldered them both making sure the solder made it to the component side on every pin. This time the HM seems to power up different, can't remember LED status but there was nothing on the Display.

It seems the poor solder joints prevented the flash of the Atmel on first boot, and the rPi is no longer trying to flash it. Reading the thread I linked above I see the command to force the re-flash of the Atmel, avrupdate /lib/firmware/hm.hex , so I enter the console on the rPi and enter that command, it erases the chip, then flashes the chip, then verifies the flash and BINGO, I HAVE A WORKING HEATER METER!

So now I need to connect to the network, since the default settings for the LAN didn't suite my network I couldn't connect. So I search the forum and come up with this thread, http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?38671-HOWTO-Configuring-LinkMeter-WiFi . Following instruction I connect a CAT5 cable from the rPi to my router, then connect another computer to the router and set the computer's IP address to 192.168.200.2, BINGO, I can now load the HM web page! From there I used the config to setup the WiFi on the rPi to connect to my network and have an address that works with my network configuration, save settings and power down. Now I unplug the CAT5 cable and reboot, using the IP I just assigned to the rPi I was able to load the HM home page over the WiFi, SWEET!

Finally, I need to access that webpage from outside the network, so I search the forum and find I need to forward ports 443 and 80 to the rPi IP in my wireless router. A quick entry in the "applications/port forwarding" section and I now can access the HM Home Page from any computer on the network....

After I got over the initial soldering issues things went quite well, everything seemed to be working!

In the meantime I have modified my little smoker a bit, used aluminum tape to close off two of three vent holes. My smoker has a coal pan with only a tiny 1" hole in the bottom, very poor design. I decided to use 3/4" copper pipe to make what kinda looks like burners on a gas grill which now sits at the bottom of my coal pan, flexible copper comes out of the coal pan and through the one vent hole I left open and the blower is connected to the end. I drilled holes all around the copper tubing in the coal pan to distribute the air evenly. (I will post pictures later when it cools down)

So I hook up the HM blower to the copper tubing, fill the pan with coals. hit the coals with the torch for a few... The HM fan is blowing away stoking them coals good, so I put the smoker body on the burn plate, and put the pit probe in place. In no time the fire is raging so I put the cover on the pit and she comes right up to temperature! As the pit temp rises rapidly the fan slows way down, the pit gracefully reached the target temperature of 250 degrees and holds it steady. I mean STEADY! WOW. For grins I jump the target temp up to 275, the fan kicks up and the temp rises to 275 rather rapidly and settles perfectly! NICE! I set it back to 250, the fan slowed down and the pit fell right back down to 250 and held it on the dime!

This thing just ROCKS! I couldn't have wished for greater success! It holds the temperature like an oven, probably better than my oven! I had already planned on building a bigger DIY smoker, probably a 55 gal drum smoker, but this thing works so well I'm starting to think a stone pizza/bread oven may be on my future project list as well...

MANY THANKS to you for developing this, and everyone who has shared info in the forum which has proven very helpful to me in figuring out how to make this all happen! Hats off to you all...
 
Pictures...

Here are some pictures of the setup I put together to start out with, I plan on building a bigger DIY smoker soon...

I got this smoker for $10 bucks at a garage sale (came with three bags of wood chips!)
Smoker.jpg


This is my burn plate with the air delivery system I made installed, I'll call it the "air burner". It's just a bunch of copper fittings and pipe soldered together, the tube that goes out the bottom is a flexible copper tube that would normally be used on a water heater installation. I just hammered the end of it square (inserted electricians pliers into the tube and hammered it flat) so it would fit into the blower, it was a little loose so I added a couple wraps of electrical tape....
BurnPlate.jpg


This is the burn plate removed from the base, note that two of the three vent holes are covered over with aliminum tape...
OpenPlate.jpg


And the bottom line, ROCK SOLID temperature!
HeaterMeter.jpg

My smoker, being a water smoker, has a large pan of water between the fire and the food. The green line in the graph is the bottom rack which is right above the water. The temp tends to lag a bit on the bottom rack due to the proximity to the water, kinda like "lake effect" when you live by a large body of water....
 
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Thanks for posting this. It seems like a great way to get even air distribution and to limit the amount of air that can be drawn in. I think I will copy and adapt this idea to the smoker we are working on
 
That's really an amazingly awesome idea, and your temps are even more solid than mine. Internet Explorer though? You can get real-time streaming updates if you use Chrome, Firefox, or Opera!
 
That's really an amazingly awesome idea, and your temps are even more solid than mine. Internet Explorer though? You can get real-time streaming updates if you use Chrome, Firefox, or Opera!

Thanks for the compliment, it does hold the temp damn good!
I do recall reading the LinkMeter does not support IE, but it seemed to work and was updating real time when I watched as I cooked (with IE8), so I had no reason to try another browser. Next time I will try Firefox and Chrome and see if there is any difference.
Thanks again for sharing this project with everyone.

PS Being new to the HM I was going to suggest that the main HM page be a little more interactive, like say when Lid Open mode was activated you could click on it to toggle to lid closed. What do you know, I clicked it and that's already done! NICE JOB! (it worked in IE8 as well)
 
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Thanks for posting this. It seems like a great way to get even air distribution and to limit the amount of air that can be drawn in. I think I will copy and adapt this idea to the smoker we are working on

Glad you like it, good luck working the idea into your new smoker...

Just FYI, I used 3/4" copper, I was going to go for a more round design on the "air burner" but for some reason the 45 degree elbows were $2.49 each while the 90 degree elbows were only 69 cents. I have no clue why, they both had the same amount of copper. The flexible tube that goes out the bottom, being for a water heater installation, had ends on it almost like a garden hose. I just pulled them back and used a grinder to grind off the lip so I could remove them. The end that goes into the burner section was quite loose inside the 3/4" fitting, so I widened it by forcing it over the back side of a crescent wrench until it fit snug enough to solder.

I was going to go with flexible copper tubing for the "air burner" part, but none of the stores sell 3/4" by the foot around here, and I didn't need a $50 dollar roll of 3/4" copper! To make your life easier (and avoid a lot of soldering) you may try to source some flexible copper, I think if you go with a smaller tube you might be able to find some that you can buy by the foot. I had already fashioned the 3/4" piece that fit through my smoker, and fit the fan so I just went with it, but there should be no harm in using smaller tubing...
Good luck with your project. (make sure you seal off the other vents, otherwise you will have a hard time choking down the fire to lower the temp when needed)
 
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I do recall reading the LinkMeter does not support IE, but it seemed to work and was updating real time when I watched as I cooked (with IE8), so I had no reason to try another browser. Next time I will try Firefox and Chrome and see if there is any difference.
It supports IE it just polls for temperature updates every 10 seconds. All the other browsers have an "event stream" so the temperature updates anywhere from 1 to 5 seconds (depending on if it changes or not). I don't think IE has the popup alarm notification either. The thing that really bothers me though is that there's supposed to be a color overlay over the flames that makes them less annoying looking.
 
That's really an amazingly awesome idea, and your temps are even more solid than mine. Internet Explorer though? You can get real-time streaming updates if you use Chrome, Firefox, or Opera!

I just fired up the smoker again and got a chance to look at the LM web page through Chrome and Firefox for the first time. I do like how it updates so fast, like a constant stream... but honestly I prefer how the page looks through IE. The overlay flames look cool where the probe temps are listed in the other browsers, but the rest of the page seems to be dimmed down or blued over kinda like when items are selected. I find that kind-of annoying personally.
This picture is IE on the left half and Chrome on the right, so you can see what I mean...
browsers.jpg
 

 

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