Did my first high heat pizza cook last night using the roto-damper (over CAT5) and it worked great. I was able to achieve and hold 500 degrees in my FauxMado and the pizza was excellent. (outside ambient temperature was in the upper 40's) That pretty much covers the bases, the roto-damper will hold steady temps as low as 175 degrees all the way up to 500 degrees without a problem.
For the pizza cook I used "blower mode" letting the fan blow all the time and setting the servo damper for open/closed only, for low and slow cooks I reverse it and use "damper mode", having the fan blow at 100% only and letting the servo damper work the full range. There are a ton of ways you can configure the HM to work with the Servo+Blower but I find these two simple modes are all I need. I like "damper mode" for low and slow cooks because it doesn't force air through the pit, it lets natural convection air flow do the job, for high heat cooks you really need the blower to push the air and stoke the fire. I have used the default PID values for all of these tests and it worked very well.
This is no minor achievement, because unlike a real BGE, my FauxMado grill did NOT want to hold low temperatures before I started using a damper. No matter how tight I kept the top and bottom vents the temp in the pit always wanted to creep up into the mid 300's before it settled down. In the past I had to use minion methods to try and keep the temps low, for these experiments with the roto-damper I just lit a pile of lump coal and let it go... The Roto-Damper is able to clamp down on the air flow and backs the fire down to the size it needs to be for the setpoint, then it starts regulating air flow to keep it right in the sweet spot. It also allows me to run my top vent pretty open now, which I like because I don't want stale smoke stuck in my pit. I've noticed during low and slow cooks, regardless of the chosen setpoint, the damper seems to end up sitting around half open. I've run the pit at 225 and 375, in either case the HM will use the blower to stoke the fire to the appropriate size, then turn the blower off (at 99%) and clamp down on the damper, eventually the damper ends up right around the middle setting for the most of the cook. I couldn't be happier with how it is working...
Speaking of being happy... I'm thrilled at how I've got the HM working over the CAT5 cable now! I know many of you are blessed with good weather year round, but here in the Midwest we get bad winters and the bad weather has already started. This past week has been in the 40's-50's with lots of wind and rain, I've kept the HM and Roto-Damper running through the bad weather the whole time and cooked on it most every night. I plan to continue to cook through the winter on my FauxMado, which is why running the pit over a CAT5 cable is so important to me. I really like having my HM sitting in the kitchen instead of out at the pit, I no longer have to worry about rain, and it's easy for me to glance at to see my cook is on track without stepping outside (or powering up another device), I had been running my laptop in the kitchen in the past so I had a reference there but that's a PITA. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing better than a warm sunny day with the HM sitting next to the pit, but those days are gone for me until next MAY, so in the kitchen is where my HM will be sitting until then... With my initial CAT5 wiring scheme the temps were bouncing around about +/-5 to 10 degrees and the Roto-Damper was very hyperactive (reacting to all those false temperature swings). With the new wiring scheme I can only run two probes through the CAT5 (until the new HM board is released) but the temps are nice and steady and so is the Roto-Damper. When the pit is left undisturbed the damper finds the right position to hit the target and does very little moving, I sometimes find myself looking at it hoping it will move (cause I am still pretty excited about it) but she's moving a lot less now that I have the CAT5 cable wiring dialed in....
