LinkMeter v2 Homebrew BBQ Controller - Part 2


 
Originally posted by Brian Hilgert:
I was just curious if you ha given any thought yet on porting to the RPi? Specifically, were you planning on trying to port the existing link meter to the RPi, or if you had planned on going down a new route.
Click to expand...
I've given it a lot of thought actually. What I'd really like to do is have the ability to build OpenWrt for RaspberryPi and then thing should hopefully work with both. The OpenWrt people have said they're not going to port it though, so that may not be able to happen. Another option is to get LuCI working on a straight Debian of Fedora ARM target which might be a little easier. I'd like to avoid having a 1-2GB system image though because clearly LinkMeter only needs about 4MB worth of system image and around 32MB of RAM.

I'm just going to expand the hmdude application to support directly flashing the ATmega for that scenario, no bootloader or Ardiuno IDE would be needed any longer which should save a lot of hassle.

But to be more direct, yeah, I'll almost certainly try to keep as much code as possible the same, considering they're both just Linux ARM systems. I can't really say much more until I get one to see what I can do with it, I think my updated ship date is end of June.
 
Originally posted by Shane Woessner:
Did a test run with the linkmeter yesterday all went well for a 6 hour session. The only problem I encountered was the router itself rebooted about 4 hours in and I lost the 1st 4 hours of graphing other then that very smooth sailing.
Click to expand...

Ive been seeing this as well. I have flashed 2 routers and they become unresponsive after a few hours, I was hoping that it it because I don't have the heatermeter boards in yet. What are others seeing? My routers are WRT54Gv2s shich should be identical hardware to the WRT54GL.
 
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 Shane Woessner:
How big of a power supply is needed? I will be running a fan that pulls .68 amps. Not sure how much the router and the board pulls though.....
Click to expand...
That's a good question. The HeaterMeter board pulls roughly 15mA, the LCD+backlight is about another 25mA. The RFM12B adds another (up to) 50mA.

The router I have no idea, I assume at least 500mA.

Remember that the 0.68A is current draw when the fan is running at 100% and the actual current draw is on the order of 30x as much (in pulses) when it isn't operating at 100%. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
I'm using a brushless fan so as the voltage drops so does the amperage
icon_cool.gif
Others might want to consider this if they are having issues with EMF.
 
I like that idea. I always end up hitting the button to the right to see the set point.

dave

Originally posted by Shane Woessner:
Any way to make the pit temp and the set temp to scroll on the top line like the bottom line does with the food probes? Something like this:
Pit:224*F [100%]
Set:225*F [100%]
Click to expand...
 
Yes

Originally posted by RJ Riememsnider:
<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've used two WRT54GV2.1 and one WRT54GSV1 and haven't had the router ever reboot on me.

I've had the web interface hang, which required me to restart the web server.

dave
Click to expand...

Ah, so you were able to telnet or ssh in and restart the process? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
 
I use my v3.1 board to control my electric UDS smoker, and built one for my brother for his Bradley smoker.

Works very well,
dave

Originally posted by RJ Riememsnider:
Hi all, I see lots of progress and great advancements since I've been away. I just ordered a set of 3.2 boards and am wondering if anyone has used one of the newer setups to control an electric smoker as opposed to charcoal.
Click to expand...
 
Any way to make the pit temp and the set temp to scroll on the top line like the bottom line does with the food probes? Something like this:
Pit:224*F [100%]
Set:225*F [100%]
 
Did a test run with the linkmeter yesterday all went well for a 6 hour session. The only problem I encountered was the router itself rebooted about 4 hours in and I lost the 1st 4 hours of graphing other then that very smooth sailing.
 
Originally posted by D Peart:
I've used two WRT54GV2.1 and one WRT54GSV1 and haven't had the router ever reboot on me.

I've had the web interface hang, which required me to restart the web server.

dave
Click to expand...

Ah, so you were able to telnet or ssh in and restart the process?
 
I can't remember. I think if I rebooted I lost it, but if I just restarted lua I didn't loose everything.

For me it was caused by my fan feeding noise back into the power/ground network. I've never had an issue when I use my SSR for the electric smoker.

I've many posts in this thread where Bryan and I worked on debugging the issue. If you look back you can see the ways to check if the same thing is happening to you. It came down to the serial driver getting hung up and having to be restarted. It gets hung up because the serial port gets corrupted from the fan noise.

I don't know if what you are seeing is the same as I, but it is easy to check. Start the unit, connect the fan, set the temp to ensure the fan is running, or set the manual fan mode. Then on the router cat /dev/ttyS1 and look at the data. If that gets corrupted, then you are probably seeing the same thing I was.

dave


Originally posted by RJ Riememsnider:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by D Peart:
Yes

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by RJ Riememsnider:
<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've used two WRT54GV2.1 and one WRT54GSV1 and haven't had the router ever reboot on me.

I've had the web interface hang, which required me to restart the web server.

dave
Click to expand...

Ah, so you were able to telnet or ssh in and restart the process? </div></BLOCKQUOTE> </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think that's what I'm seeing as well. Did you lose the previously collected data when you did the restart? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
 
Originally posted by Shane Woessner:
I'm using a brushless fan so as the voltage drops so does the amperage
icon_cool.gif
Others might want to consider this if they are having issues with EMF.
Click to expand...
I think we're all using brushless fans. The problem is that we're not really lowering the voltage, we're turning 12V on and off really fast (500Hz). This causes the BLDC motor controller to try to kickstart the fan 500 times a second and that kickstart pulls a ton of current.

The capacitor is there to smooth out some of that. The 22uF was chosen because it reduced the surge significantly (higher uF reduces surge) while still allowing the fan speed to be controlled (lower uF creates a more linear % to speed correlation).

EDIT: And changing the top display to swap back and forth doesn't really fit very well. The bottom scrolls based on menu state transitions Food1 -> Food2 -> Ambient (loop). To have the top flip flop would add 3 new states like Food1Set, Food2Set, AmbSet which would be inserted between the 3 others and then the code just looks like a mess And it's never going to be displaying what you want to see, so you're going to have to either wait 10-30 seconds or press a button. And if you're going to press a button to check the set point I'd just press the "right" button which displays the setpoint, then "left" takes me back.
 
Originally posted by RJ Riememsnider:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Dave Smith:
yes
Click to expand...

Do you see an LED indicator on the fron of the linksys on cooresponding to the port you plugged into on the back? It should be 1,2,3,or 4. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

following are lit - power; wlan;and #3
 
Originally posted by Dave Smith:
nope not working, still can't get 192.168.1.1 to work.....
Click to expand...


Here are the steps I took. I downloaded the custom firmware from github. I disconnected my laptop from wireless. I plugged my laptop directly in to one of the LAN ports on the WRT. I went to 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 (Can't remember which, one should work.) I logged into the router using the default user/pass. I went to update firmware, and uploaded the custom firmware through the WRT's interface. I left the router alone while it applied the update and restarted. This took a few minutes.

Once the restart was complete, I was able to connect to the router on 192.168.200.1. Then I was able to set up the Wifi in client mode. It took a few minutes for this to take effect. Once the wifi light on the WRT was on, I took note of what IP address had been assigned to the WRT. It should be something along the lines of 192.168.1.*

At this point I unplugged from the WRT. I reconnected my laptop to Wifi, and was able to connect to the WRT through the 192.168.1.* address I took note of above.
 
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 Smith:
Need some help with the router side....connected linksys to my home router lan 3 to lan 3, type in 192.168.1.1 and get address not valid.
(I'm trying to flash it )
Click to expand...
If it is still running the stock Linksys firmware, plug your computer directly into the WRT54G and then you should be able to access http://192.168.1.1/

On the rebooting issue
I've had never had a problem with the router rebooting itself during a cook. It is possible though if the device runs out of memory for some reason that the kernel will crash and then the hardware watchdog will reboot the device. More likely it will just kill the webserver process. Neither of these ever happen while I'm cooking though, although I am careful about not trying to open too many connections to it. For testing I keep the LinkMeter running 24/7 and check in on it from time to time. Right now it has been running for 28 days. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Guess it's my bad luck. The web interface stops responding after a few hours. I just always rebooted the linksys. This time I'll telnet in a see what I can find.
 
Originally posted by Dave Smith:
ok, does holding the reset button down for 30 seconds do the reset?
Click to expand...

I normally pull power, hold the reset button in, plug in power, and way about 10 seconds, then release the reset button.

But. The official cath all reset is a 30/30/30 which is overkill. It's hold the reset for 30 seconds, unplug power for 30 seconds, plug power back in for 30 seconds, release the reset, then unplug and replug.
 
Originally posted by RJ Riememsnider:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Dave Smith:
done
Click to expand...
Ok, what do you get with the ipconfig? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Bosun>ipconfig

Windows IP Configuration


Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 2:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : lan

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::4125:573f:a14:c528%10
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.4
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

Tunnel adapter isatap.lan:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Tunnel adapter isatap.{D235401A-81A6-463A-9F0D-FAE6A7B95EE6}:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Tunnel adapter isatap.{1CE7AF2A-5E63-4FE3-B533-05FC8CC75FD7}:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :

C:\Users\Bosun>
 
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