Noobie from Sydney Australia

[A-aron]

Hi everyone,

I just joined the forum here after getting into BBQ the last few months and now wanting to perfect my 'cue. I'm a chef by trade but I'm new to the art of smoking.

I've had a few good cooks with things like chicken wings, pork belly and tofu. The thorn in my side was a beef short rib. I was working blind, only using the kettle's built in thermometer (I know huh, sheer craziness).

Knowing better now, I've been looking into making some mods to my 22inch webber.

My 1st question that I was hoping for some help on, is it possible to set up 1 PID with 2 inputs (thermocouples)?
i.e 1 for the kettle temp and 1 for the meat, measuring its core temp. I've seen set ups with 1 themocouple, measuring the kettle temp but never 2. The problem I see with this is that the meat could over cook when doing an over-night cook. The meat will continue to cook well past it's optimum core temp when I only have 1 probe controlling to cabinet, the cabinet temp always being set much high than the meat's core temp.

This conundrum lead me here, seeing the heatermeter as a reasonably priced PID that can handle multiple inputs. My problem is that I'm a chef with a short attention span. I wouldn't call myself dumb but understanding the soldering and full potential of the heatermeter would take me a lifetime to grasp. I would much rather be perfecting that short rib and thinking up new project.

So my 2nd question, can the heatermeter easily take care of my original conundrum? I'm sure it could but would I need to do any special coding or any advance programming?

Lastly I'm wondering if it's ethical or in the right spirit to ask someone here to assemble the heatermeter and ship it over. This would save me multiple weekends but I'm worried that I'm ripping off this nice community here.
In return I would be more than happy to share non-bbq cooking advice or anything that might be in my wheelhouse, being a chef and all.

Thanks in advance for your advice. Happy cooking

Some picture of cooks so far.

Smoking some wings. I popped the wing bones out before glazing:

The wings got a teriyaki treatment and got served next to spinach with a sesame dressing, carrots sauteed with miso and shredded nori, finally...rice:

Last week end I did a whole chicken that I got from a friend who raised the chicken himself. It was so clean and you can see it was well looked after. I think I did it justice

Still juicy:

Other home cooking pictures:

Venison basted in Thai red curry paste, grilled on the webber of course:

Seared scallops with spinach puree, broad beans, global artichokes and shaved fennel:

Scallop, burnt butter and truffle tortellini:

served them with cauliflower puree, fried cauliflower and more shaved black truffle:

 

[Bryan Mayland]

There's not a way to do 2 thermocouples integrated on the standard HeaterMeter board, but there is an additional PCB out there that adds additional thermocouples. There's a small amount of modification to the main board to make that work though.

As far as 2 control probes, the software really isn't designed around it but I'm not sure any sane person would use two inputs into a PID loop to control the same output. What it sounds like you're talking about it more just shutting down the BBQ as the meat gets to temperature? There are several facilities for that in the software.
1) Straight cutoff - When the meat hits X set the pit temp to Y (one time change). To do this, set an alarm on the food probe temp with a "Setpoint" action.
2) Ramping - When the meat hits X ramp the pit temp down linearly to Y as meat approaches Y. To do this, just set a "ramp mode" with trigger X and target Y.
3) Complex logic? Use an alarm script to trigger whatever action you want at various temps.

 

[Jas E]

If you want to control 2 pits, you really need to look at running two separate HeaterMeters. I do this with 2 HMs on the rare occasion that I'm cooking up a storm and have both pits fired up.

 

[Steve_M]

If you want to control 2 pits, you really need to look at running two separate HeaterMeters. I do this with 2 HMs on the rare occasion that I'm cooking up a storm and have both pits fired up.

I think he was looking to control a single pit via multiple probes, which you can do with the set point option in the alarms config section.

 

[A-aron]

Thanks for the reply Bryan. You're right in that I'm trying to shut down the BBQ as the meat is coming to temperature. The straight cutoff and ramping sound like great facilities. Maybe I'm reading into the few videos that I've seen of the heatermeter in action. It looked like folks had it set up to take care of the pit temp as well as the core temp of the meat.

Would something like this make sense to the heatermeter?:
Hold probe A temp @ 225F (by controlling airflow). If probe B temp = more than 150F execute straight cutoff (or ramping).

Jas E - I'm not ready to do the double pit just yet :0 I gotta master just the one first hehehe
Steve_M - I'll have to have a read about those set point options, to understand if it can do what I'm after.

Thanks again guys.

 

[WBegg]

Send me a PM. I'm in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia and can send you a completed unit. Happy to help out a fellow Australian (although I'm a US expat).

 

[RalphTrimble]

I think what you need is the "Ramp Mode" alarm, which may only be available in the snap shot release at this point (not sure if it made it's way into an official release yet or not?)
Anyway, with ramp mode you use a meat probe to trigger the pit temp to ramp down to your meat done temp. You set the trigger temp and target temp and select the meat probe to monitor, the HM will automatically manage ramping down the pit so the meat and pit end up at the target done temp for your meat.

 

[Nathan FA]

It sounds like the OP is simply worried about the meat getting over done while asleep. With the HeaterMeter there are several options to either lower the pit temp when the meat is done or you can simply have it alert you that your meat us done and you can wake up and take it off. It can be set up to email you, text you, or with an app on your Android phone (pitdroid) you can simply have your phone sound when the food is done. You can also set it to alarm if your pit gets to hot or cold.

 

[A-aron]

You can also set it to alarm if your pit gets to hot or cold.

Awesome. I guess I'll work out how to get a heatermeter (hopefully assembled) all the way to Australia and then work through the options.

Thanks