Post your live HeaterMeter Cooks


 
It looks to me like you might be getting some air leakage so every time the fan kicks in it overshoots. The smoker sort of maintained its own temperature for the first 5 hours and took almost 2 hours to come down to temperature after a small burst of air at 2am. Here's my 11lb (96lb after trimming) brisket I made last week. It's not great control (my felt seal needed to be replaced like 2 years ago and I still haven't done it), but you can see the HeaterMeter is doing a lot more control and a lot less 0% output waiting for the temps to come down.
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The white filled area is the servo, and the fan (blue filled area) only ran a few times during the whole cook. The dip around 9am was "Ramp Mode" kicking in and starting to auto-lower the pit temp. I usually turn that on when I go to sleep just in case things happen really fast at night.
 
That makes sense, especially since it really became an issue after I opened the lid to move the probe. It wouldn’t surprise me- besides the hinge, it’s a stock WSM with no seals or anything else.

I definitely have to improve the air vents- currently using the doggie bowl method, which I can’t get tight enough and I’m sure prone to leaks (in addition to a surely leaky lid)
 
There is a lot of grease released when you smoke a brisket. The grease was already in the smoker and after you wrapped it you let in lots of air. I sometimes see variations like that when I get mini-grease fires peaking the temps at intervals like that.

Tom
 
First test-run! Ofcourse I overshot when firing up. But since there was no meat on the place i didn't mind. I've lowered the startup max to 60%. Lets see how that works next time. This experiment is to figure out how everything works and to testrun my GrillEye Pro probe (Probe 1) in combination with the HeaterMeter.

10:40: Tried different settings (creating a nice heartbeat :D)
11:23: Discovered an airleak (I noticed the temperature rising with the servo valve closed. Bottom vent wasn't entirely closed)
11:57: Closed down the top vent even more to make the temperature drop.

At that point I saw the HeaterMeter come in action!

I guess the GrillEye Pro probe (set to the ThermoWorks preset) is 'acceptable'. If anyone has the coëfficiënt settings for this probe, please let me know.

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Oh, and the weather I'm testing in.... it's poaring rain! :ROFLMAO:
 
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Preparing chicken on the Bastard!

First hour slow cooking (approx 110°C/230°F) until coretemp 73°C/164°F . Next 15 mins grilling at higher temps (with lid open/closed). And lastly firing up big-time to clean up: 451°C/ 844°F.

I love playing with fire!
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Setting up to smoke 2 packer briskets (they'll be going on around 6:00 PM or so,) for dinner tomorrow for the local first responders. One of the EMTs here in town has a restaurant & a catering business, when I asked him about doing something like this, he offered to kick in sides. I'm down with that. I'll add pics as appropriate.
 
My first BBQ since a bunch of dental work, I'mma make up for lost time! I have a rack of spareribs I just put on, and in an hoiur or two I'll put a 7.5lb butt. I'm not sure if I had enough charcoal to go all night, so someone call me if it runs out of fuel at like 3-5am :LOL:
EDIT: And I did run out of fuel around 5am! That's ok though, it was about to leave the stall anyway so I just foiled it and popped it in the oven on convection 225 to finish it up.


I'll even turn on PID debugging and noisegraph, which spoiler alert, I rewrote this week to not have the awful performance impact it had before (which used to break the A/C line noise filter on some cycles). If it doesn't break, that will be in the snapshot next week.
 
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http://fireyeti.servebeer.com/luci

First shot with the heatermeter v4.3 pi zero w. It's hooked up to a home made UDS. Once I shut the fan down below 20% and made the maximum 80% during a cook it seems to be happy. The wind blowing into the damper triggered the second lid message I believe. Will let it run overnight to see how the ash buildup affects the cook. I lit the lump charcoal with a propane torch for about 30 seconds right in the middle of the charcoal basket.
 
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Now, I know what you're thinking after seeing the other posts in here, "Dang son. That's a real bad cook right there. Look at that overshoot and the swings!" But, let me interject that this is my very first trial with the HM and no meat was harmed in the process. It was just a trial run to see how everything worked. And I agree. Swings were a little large and I didn't have enough fuel to really get a good beat going by the time it came down from the overshoot. But realistically, knowing how bad my swings could get before, this is an absolute miracle. I'm an absolute data nerd and this is exactly what I've been craving ever since getting into smoking. Also, If anyone has a good PID configuration for an Akorn I'd love to use it. Hope to post a lot more here!
 

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Obsessively watching graphs and controller output is your new hobby! :D Welcome.

Looking at your graph, notice how the HeaterMeter output from ~21:30 to past 23:00 is zero? That means HeaterMeter isn't doing anything at all to control your smoker. When the output goes to zero, the temperature should start going down pretty quickly (5 - 10 minutes max). You'll need to seal up the smoker a little better by closing more vents or blocking more air at the input (with a damper) so HeaterMeter is actually in control and not just sitting at 0% output for 2 hours waiting for the fire to burn itself out on its own. That also contributes to the initial overshoot, because it expected that when it goes to 0% output, that it won't just keep getting hotter.
 
After using the settings for an UDS recommended in this thread I settled on P: 4 I: 0.02 D: 13. I ahve a 55 gallon drum with 3/4" pipe adapted to 1" with the roto-damper and the standard Delta fan. I tried raw tuning and had great success initially, which was followed by large swings once the fire got burning.


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1602968194327.pngSecond cook with the WSM. Probably need to tune the PID but I honestly don’t know where to start. I have the seal around the lid base, and on the door, but still have trouble sometimes with getting down to 235. Not sure what caused that temperature rise, since I was not home when it happened (nice isn’t it?
 
Nice looking graph, but it looks like you need to seal it up better because the output is barely being controlled by the heater meter fan (it is near zero output most of the time). You have all the bottom vents closed?
 
Yeah, they are closed. This being a new model WSM 22, the Lavalock kit didn’t need to be installed at the base, since there’s no horizontal surface (it just kinda fits in there until the bulging lip makes contact). I’m getting a small bit of leakage there, but a good amount from the door. I tried hand shaping the door around a 5 gallon bucket, but there are still gaps. The first cook, I turned everything off to see if any charcoal remained, but there was nothing but ash (although to be fair, I’m not sure how much there was in the first place, since i had done a 6 hour rib cook with 1/4 pan of charcoal). May just need to get the aftermarket door.

Edit: I actually just thought about the ash hole at the very bottom. How would I seal that up?
 
Actually, I wouldn’t want to seal that up. I think it’s more for draining any water that gets into the smoker. Should I be closing the top lid partially like I’ve read in other channels, or leaving it wide open? It wide open right now.
 
After hours of playing around with the Akorn I finally got it to a happy place at 250. Not sure why it wasn't having it at 225, but honestly, I'll take 250 with as stable as it was. Here were the parameters as well. If anyone has any more advice on them, I'd love to hear it! I also took you advice Bryan and sealed up the cooker a lot more. I got some extra thick lava lock and it seems to be working incredibly well! I'll being doing at least one pork butt on Sunday and I can't wait to see how it turns out! I'll keep yall posted!
 

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