LinkMeter v2 Homebrew BBQ Controller - Part 1

[Bryan Mayland]

Originally posted by Dave S (GeoDave):
It would be nice to see a button on the main page to allow you to toggle lid open off and on(maybe near the top left hand corner where is shows you when you in lid open).

Oh yes, I forgot to address this when you brought it up in the last post. I agree there should be a button for it. I was thinking of a little icon where the lid open text is that's always there that can toggle it on and off. It would have to be a little big to be finger-friendly though and I think it might stick out. Any better ideas?

There's a lot of things I'd prefer that would "open up a dialog" but unforunately those don't work very well on portable devices for the reason of zoom:
1) If you're zoomed in when the dialog opens, you're probably scrolled to the wrong place, forcing you to scroll to where the window is.
2) If you're not zoomed in when the dialog opens, you probably need to zoom in to use the dialog.

I wonder if... I can make it so that when the dialog comes up it switches to a nozoom viewport...

 

[D Peart]

Originally posted by Dave S (GeoDave):
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by D Peart:
the blower is 12V .3A

So this isn't the fan in the part list? I haven't had any problems with that fan at all. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

No it isn't. When I was looking for a fan, I had read a lot that with my smoker (UDS) you needed more air flow, so I bought one with better air flow. BIG MISTAKE! I now run mine with the auto fan speed set at 30%, and my air valve almost shut completely.

If I don't I blow all the hot air out of the smoker. The exhaust vent turns into a hair dryer

I'll have to look around and see if I can get a smaller one.

I'm also going to try adding one more diode to see if it is current feeding back through the + terminal. That is an easy enough thing to check.

dave

 

[D Peart]

Originally posted by Bryan Mayland:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Dave S (GeoDave):
It would be nice to see a button on the main page to allow you to toggle lid open off and on(maybe near the top left hand corner where is shows you when you in lid open).

Oh yes, I forgot to address this when you brought it up in the last post. I agree there should be a button for it. I was thinking of a little icon where the lid open text is that's always there that can toggle it on and off. It would have to be a little big to be finger-friendly though and I think it might stick out. Any better ideas?

There's a lot of things I'd prefer that would "open up a dialog" but unforunately those don't work very well on portable devices for the reason of zoom:
1) If you're zoomed in when the dialog opens, you're probably scrolled to the wrong place, forcing you to scroll to where the window is.
2) If you're not zoomed in when the dialog opens, you probably need to zoom in to use the dialog.

I wonder if... I can make it so that when the dialog comes up it switches to a nozoom viewport... </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

How about the ability to set the max auto fan speed by clicking on the fan speed bar?

 

[D Peart]

As a digression from making the controllers, I just put 24 pounds of cured pork belly in the smoker at 120F. In 10 hours I'll have about 22 - 23 pounds of apple smoked bacon!

With the LM->HM controlling it all . . .

 

[Bryan Mayland]

Originally posted by Jay Bremner:
Any ideas on how I can get the bootloader and sketch onto my ATMEGA?

I'm not sure what they mean by "optiboot does not support this sketch" but you can either try what Kyle Christensen did between pages 23-24 of this thread, which may work.

OR I just considered that Optiloader might work. Upload that sketch to your Uno, then hook up the ATmega you want to bootload with the wiring shown on the Arduino as ISP page (breadboard style or using the image I made of the ICSP header on HeaterMeter) and fire up the Uno. It should upload the sketch in just a few seconds once you power up the Uno.

 

[D Peart]

I'm seeing the open lid get triggered constantly. It is a bit windy outside and I'm only smoking at 120F. Is there a way to turn it off?

 

[Bryan Mayland]

Originally posted by D Peart:
How about the ability to set the max auto fan speed by clicking on the fan speed bar?

Oh man great idea!

 

[Bryan Mayland]

Originally posted by D Peart:
I'm seeing the open lid get triggered constantly. It is a bit windy outside and I'm only smoking at 120F. Is there a way to turn it off?

Set lid detect to 0%

 

[Jay Bremner]

Originally posted by Bryan Mayland:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Jay Bremner:
Any ideas on how I can get the bootloader and sketch onto my ATMEGA?

I'm not sure what they mean by "optiboot does not support this sketch" but you can either try what Kyle Christensen did between pages 23-24 of this thread, which may work.

OR I just considered that Optiloader might work. Upload that sketch to your Uno, then hook up the ATmega you want to bootload with the wiring shown on the Arduino as ISP page (breadboard style or using the image I made of the ICSP header on HeaterMeter) and fire up the Uno. It should upload the sketch in just a few seconds once you power up the Uno. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

OK...the first couple of suggestions didn't work...again I think because I am using an Uno. I read through the banter between you and Kyle and here's what I got when I ran avrdude:

JayBirde$ avrdude -p m328p -P /dev/tty.usbmodem3d21 -c stk500v1 -b 9600 -F

avrdude: AVR device initialized and ready to accept instructions

Reading | ################################################## | 100% 0.13s

avrdude: Device signature = 0x1e950f

avrdude: safemode: Fuses OK

avrdude done. Thank you.

Seems OK...right? Well, removed microcontroller from Uno and installed one I just programmed back into the Uno and when I try to upload Blink, this is what I am getting:

avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

Any ideas? I know I am a pain in the posterior, but please believe that I am treading in areas where I have never ventured before and it is both exciting and frightening to this noob!

 

[Jay Bremner]

Well....I think I see the problem. All I did was connect the microcontroller and made sure it was SEEN in avrdude. I think that I didn't actually burn the bootloader...duh!

I believe I would just follow the part of the tutorial where it says Burn Arduino Bootloader using the command line. Sorry guys!

 

[Bryan Mayland]

Originally posted by Jay Bremner:
Seems OK...right? Well, removed microcontroller from Uno and installed one I just programmed back into the Uno and when I try to upload Blink, this is what I am getting:

Ok let's just review what you've got. You've got an Uno with the standard optiboot bootloader and a blank ATmega chip right?

The Arduino "shell" (the shield once you remove the ATmega chip) is, for all purposes, just a USB<->Serial (UART) converter. The only way to program a bootloader is to use the SPI bus (which isn't the UART). The ICSP header connects to the SPI bus of the ATmega chip.

We can use the Uno as a USB->Serial via the shield and then use a programmed ATMega as a Serial->SPI converter. The key point is that the ATmega plugged into the DIP socket on the shield has optboot WITH a special sketch on it. From the programmed ATmega you make a connection to your blank ATmega. This is either done by building the breadboard circuit from the ArduinoISP page, or by doing the same circuit to the ICSP header of a built HeaterMeter board (but not while it is installed in a router).

The final question is what sketch you're running on the programmed ATmega. If you're running the Optiloader, you can just power up the Uno and it should program the blank chip. In this setup you can open the USB serial port and see the progress. If you're using the ArduinoISP sketch, you now need to use avrdude with -c stk500v1 -b 9600 and I think it is -Uflash:w

ptibootwhatever.hex:i

 

[Kyle Christensen]

Once I had my breadboard setup, and the reset disabled via the 22 uF cap, I just burnt the bootloader via the arduino software, then swapped the Atmega into my arduino to upload the sketch. The hardest part was getting that **** sync error resolved, which I don't believe is an issue on the Uno boards.

 

[Jay Bremner]

Mine was reading ok with the 390 ohm pullup resistor in series with the reset line. So once I can communicate with the blank microcontroller, I can just use the Arduino software, goto Tools, board, Uno. Then go to Tools, Burn Bootloader, Arduino as ISP (using the Arduino ISP v4 sketch I downloaded from Mega-ISP), correct?

Then once that is cool, pop the original Uno microcontroller out and put in my newly flashed microcontroller, load the LM sketch and bango!

 

[Dave S (GeoDave)]

Originally posted by D Peart:
I'm seeing the open lid get triggered constantly. It is a bit windy outside and I'm only smoking at 120F. Is there a way to turn it off?

HAHA...this is why I was interested in a button. I am never going to smoke when it is windy again! The wind would gust 20-30 MPH and drop the temp by 5-10+ degrees. I guess this just highlights my inexperience. It made me so mad. Since I don't have an LCD on my current version...I couldn't turn it off. Didn't realize you could set lid detect to 0. Mine only kicked in twice...your graph looks maddening to me.

 

[Kyle Christensen]

I had the board set as "Atmega328 on a breadboard (8Mhz internal clock)" using the hardware.zip I downloaded from the website linked previously, and programmer as "ArduinoISP", using the ArduinoISP sketch distributed with 1.0. Then I just used "Burn bootloader", yanked the chip in my Arduino and replaced it with the one I just burnt, and uploaded the HM sketch.

 

[Bryan Mayland]

Originally posted by Dave S (GeoDave):
HAHA...this is why I was interested in a button. I am never going to smoke when it is windy again! The wind would gust 20-30 MPH and drop the temp by 5-10+ degrees. I guess this just highlights my inexperience. It made me so mad. Since I don't have an LCD on my current version...I couldn't turn it off. Didn't realize you could set lid detect to 0. Mine only kicked in twice...your graph looks maddening to me.

You can also set it to a larger value, the 6% was so that it was close to the old default of 15F at 225F setpoint. In the big green egg at both 225F (+/-13F) and 400F (+/-24F)(my two test points) it seemed like a good value, but I guess it can really vary depending on your smoker and WWWWWIIIIIND, which I have very little of where the egg is.

Here's a fun screencap of the hmdude optiboot interaction on bootup I grabbed while debugging the heatermeter baud != optiboot baud problem:


The dips in RX show where the ATmega is "off". First transmit is the /reboot command where you see nRESET gets asserted. We try to sync once (a dummy sync) while it is still off, and once while it is on. They sync 375ms after the reboot command was issued. Then hmdude and optiboot exchange phone numbers, there's a 16ms pause, and the ATmega is off again. This time it is out for about 270ms as HeaterMeter code starts up. Finally uoi see a chunk of RX indicating the first serial data from HeaterMeter.

 

[D Peart]

Originally posted by Dave S (GeoDave):
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by D Peart:
I'm seeing the open lid get triggered constantly. It is a bit windy outside and I'm only smoking at 120F. Is there a way to turn it off?

HAHA...this is why I was interested in a button. I am never going to smoke when it is windy again! The wind would gust 20-30 MPH and drop the temp by 5-10+ degrees. I guess this just highlights my inexperience. It made me so mad. Since I don't have an LCD on my current version...I couldn't turn it off. Didn't realize you could set lid detect to 0. Mine only kicked in twice...your graph looks maddening to me. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I tired the lo=0 thing, but ever since I updated everything I've been having issues setting anything through the webpage and today I couldn't set it via simple echo commands either.

I may have to take it apart and see if my serial connection so wonky. Though the webpage stayed up the entire time as I was using the SSR today.

dave

 

[Jay Bremner]

Originally posted by Kyle Christensen:
I had the board set as "Atmega328 on a breadboard (8Mhz internal clock)" using the hardware.zip I downloaded from the website linked previously, and programmer as "ArduinoISP", using the ArduinoISP sketch distributed with 1.0. Then I just used "Burn bootloader", yanked the chip in my Arduino and replaced it with the one I just burnt, and uploaded the HM sketch.

Did you have the 16mhz oscillator connected to PB6(Pin #9) and PB7(Pin #10)?

 

[Dave S (GeoDave)]

Originally posted by Bryan Mayland:
Any better ideas?

There's a lot of things I'd prefer that would "open up a dialog" but unforunately those don't work very well on portable devices for the reason of zoom:
1) If you're zoomed in when the dialog opens, you're probably scrolled to the wrong place, forcing you to scroll to where the window is.
2) If you're not zoomed in when the dialog opens, you probably need to zoom in to use the dialog.

I wonder if... I can make it so that when the dialog comes up it switches to a nozoom viewport...

No better idea for the on/off...sound good to me.

As for the webpage:

GUI's have to be the most difficult thing to make work...especially when you are targeting large and small screens. I am not sure how much space these web pages take up and I know we are limited on space on the router. I guess I visualize one full webpage (the one we have now) and one mobile version. I have seen sites that can detect the type of device you are using.

I wonder is someone has written a mobile plotting api for jquery. You could have the temps at the top taking up 1/5th of the screen with a mobile version of the chart taking up the rest. You could then have an expandable dashboard at the bottom to control the lid open mode, max fan speed, etc. Just an idea...probably pretty ambitious...you have surprised in the past.

As far as the Lid off/on...if you could

Oh I stopped by Goodwill today and picked up a WRT54GS v1 (32mb RAM and 8mb flash) for $3.99...yes $3.99 The DD-WRT site says it has no serial ports but that is not true. I have tested my linkmeter on ttyS1 and ttyS0 and they both work. Can't wait to see how the board I designed fits into the case. I have WAY too many routers these days!!!

 

[Kyle Christensen]

Originally posted by Jay Bremner:
Did you have the 16mhz oscillator connected to PB6(Pin #9) and PB7(Pin #10)?

Nope, I was exactly like the breadboard diagram, with the exception of the 22uF cap I had leftover from the HM build between reset and ground.