Setting up my HeaterMeter - battery power and headless
- Thread starter AndyR
- Start date
HM runs correctly, just dumping data on the serial port like mad after the EEPROM is cleared. But on the next reset and all subsequent ones the HM just outputs the version info and seems to hang there. There must be something it wants to see in the eeprom. Thanks for the tip David.
The latest code fixed the problem I was having, so on to the next thing: I have some issues with the fan settings, I think.
I have a probe installed and it's reporting room temp. I set the target temp to something like 80 and the fan % gradually goes above zero, slowly increasing as it should. The problem is that there is no fan activity, 0% duty cycle. The only way I can get any output is by screwing around with the MaxStartupSpeed. Even then it doesn't vary at all, it just runs a fixed DC the whole time, but even then it's seemingly not linked to the settings? I searched around a little bit and it seems there's a startup mode, but I'm confused about how it's intended to work.
What the heck is it supposed to do? This is a 4.3.3 board and the latest code, like from this morning.
I have a probe installed and it's reporting room temp. I set the target temp to something like 80 and the fan % gradually goes above zero, slowly increasing as it should. The problem is that there is no fan activity, 0% duty cycle. The only way I can get any output is by screwing around with the MaxStartupSpeed. Even then it doesn't vary at all, it just runs a fixed DC the whole time, but even then it's seemingly not linked to the settings? I searched around a little bit and it seems there's a startup mode, but I'm confused about how it's intended to work.
What the heck is it supposed to do? This is a 4.3.3 board and the latest code, like from this morning.
Dave Smith
TVWBB Super Fan
you say you have a probe installed, hope its in the pit probe jack, or fan won't work.
Yeah it's in the pit probe jack. It even tells me what temperature it's reading, go figure.
Everything is up and running and on the smoker running a test for the first time! I'm using one entire 18.5lb bag of KBB, I guess I use the Minion method where you light 6 briquettes in the chimney and nestle them into the middle of the pile. Also 4 chunks of crab apple wood. The water pan is full of 35F water, it's 24F ambient, and 5-15mph wind, and the sun is going down. I have no insulation, stock door (bent up a bit, not sealing well at the moment. It will be interesting to see how long this lasts tonight. There's no meat on it, just testing things out.
Here's a pic of conditions, how exciting!
Here's a pic of conditions, how exciting!
Target temp of 225 was reached freaking fast! Yeah! Interesting observation: It hit 226ish and was dithering a little, then stopped at 227 and hung out there, zero fan. Then it got to 228. I then closed off the top vent completely (all the lowers have been closed the whole time). Temp went up to 229 and it hovered there for a while, and took about 10 minutes to get back down to 227, where it's been sitting for about 10 minutes now. I know my cover is not sealing well right now, and there's probably some air getting past the lower vents, too.
I mounted the blower (6.7cfm) inside of a PVC tee coupler and blocked off the top. I was trying to keep the wind out without going to great lengths.
I mounted the blower (6.7cfm) inside of a PVC tee coupler and blocked off the top. I was trying to keep the wind out without going to great lengths.
I woke up about an hour ago and the temp was down to 180, blower on 100%. There's ash all over the cooking grate and everything else. Upon opening the door I saw there was a thin ring all the way around of 50% burnt charcoal, maybe 20 briquettes? I shuffled them around and opened up the top vent (it had been nearly closed all night long, which it seemed to want) and let it rip. It got back up to 225 pretty quickly, but now it's struggling bad. It's 7am now and I just set it to 150 to see how long it can maintain that. The smoker got up to 225 last night at about 5pm, so I got 12 hours at 225 from one whole bag of KBB and a few wood chunks, which is about what I got before the HM setup in similar weather (windy, leaky WSM, 19F).
One interesting thing I noticed last night is that the temp gauge on the lid was reading almost exactly the same thing as the HM. In the past I found the gauge to always be off 30 degrees or more from a 225 target temp (as read by my Maverick wireless probe). This is either a result of superior convection, which I didn't expect, or something is off. I will calibrate the probes today. It's set to one of the Thermoworks probes, which is what they are.
One interesting thing I noticed last night is that the temp gauge on the lid was reading almost exactly the same thing as the HM. In the past I found the gauge to always be off 30 degrees or more from a 225 target temp (as read by my Maverick wireless probe). This is either a result of superior convection, which I didn't expect, or something is off. I will calibrate the probes today. It's set to one of the Thermoworks probes, which is what they are.
Yeah, I figured that, too. It seemed to like it last night because the blower was able to push enough air out around the lid and door, I suppose. The fan ran between 0-25% until the fuel was basically gone. Temp control was very good, too.
Normally for a winter cook like this I would have had the top about 1/2 open, at least. The ash all around was bad, I have to determine if there's some way around that. I guess I can limit fan speed, I'll have to do some testing once the temps come down and I can see how the ash fell. It doesn't help that KBB is about the ashiest around.
I need to get some better fuel for sure. I've tried the Cowboy lump in the past and it was just like the reviews, so I just went back to KBB for most. I've used Kingsford competition when it was on sale once and I really liked that. I should really seal up the smoker better, too.
Just an update on the battery: It's down to 12.7v @39F out in the cold. I've left it on all day/night since about this time yesterday. Today I let the blower run all day at 45-75% just to see what it does. The voltage when I started was 13.2v @ 68F. I'm pretty confident that this arrangement will run for a week under normal fan workload.
Just an update on the battery: It's down to 12.7v @39F out in the cold. I've left it on all day/night since about this time yesterday. Today I let the blower run all day at 45-75% just to see what it does. The voltage when I started was 13.2v @ 68F. I'm pretty confident that this arrangement will run for a week under normal fan workload.
Just a little update here. It's been running for about 2 days straight. I haven't had a fire in the smoker, but I've set the setpoint to something higher than the ambient temp so it's been running the fan at 40% or so for most of the time. This morning the battery was only down to 12.68v @ 33F. I bought some Grove lump last night so I might fire it up this morning. I have a brisket flat in the fridge that needs to get cooked, maybe I'll try it.
Here's what the hetermeter box looks like. I still have to build or buy a battery charger to stick in here, but there's a ton of room. The red-top box is just to store the probes when not in use. I put a notch along the sealing edge of the box to pass the probes through. I will probably put a flap of rubber on the outside of the lid to keep the wires looped downwards. The idea here is not to create a 100% waterproof box, but 99.5%. If there's a loop in the probe wires the water will run down the loop and drip on the ground instead of inside the box, so I don't need a perfect seal around them. I need to come up with a simple way to hold everything in place in the box, but for now all the stuff can move around and it doesn't hurt anything.
This is a photo of the blower housing I made. This is just a PVC tee I picked up a Lowes. It has a 3/4 NPT female port on the tee. I actually glued the blower right to the opening inside of the blower so it blows directly into the 3/4 NPT port. The top of the tee is capped and the bottom is open. This is completely free flowing for the blower and seems to work well against the wind so far, but I want to test that somehow. It's very windy today so maybe I will have a chance.
Here's what the hetermeter box looks like. I still have to build or buy a battery charger to stick in here, but there's a ton of room. The red-top box is just to store the probes when not in use. I put a notch along the sealing edge of the box to pass the probes through. I will probably put a flap of rubber on the outside of the lid to keep the wires looped downwards. The idea here is not to create a 100% waterproof box, but 99.5%. If there's a loop in the probe wires the water will run down the loop and drip on the ground instead of inside the box, so I don't need a perfect seal around them. I need to come up with a simple way to hold everything in place in the box, but for now all the stuff can move around and it doesn't hurt anything.
This is a photo of the blower housing I made. This is just a PVC tee I picked up a Lowes. It has a 3/4 NPT female port on the tee. I actually glued the blower right to the opening inside of the blower so it blows directly into the 3/4 NPT port. The top of the tee is capped and the bottom is open. This is completely free flowing for the blower and seems to work well against the wind so far, but I want to test that somehow. It's very windy today so maybe I will have a chance.
Very nice!!
I had thought at one time of doing something like this, and even thought of installing a cheap Tablet in the lid under a waterproof clear cover to display the "Blue Flames" graph and data.
When I was in Australia, I ran my HM off of a 12V power center. It had a 38Ah battery inside, and I had no issues running 36 hours before recharging.
I had thought at one time of doing something like this, and even thought of installing a cheap Tablet in the lid under a waterproof clear cover to display the "Blue Flames" graph and data.
When I was in Australia, I ran my HM off of a 12V power center. It had a 38Ah battery inside, and I had no issues running 36 hours before recharging.
38Ah would run forever! I love it so far. I might try to get it going with PitDroid, that shouldn't be too hard to do. For now I just love having control and sleep.
My first actual cook is going on right now... 13lb brisket flat. Going with just an empty foiled pan, I've never done that before. I'm also running the Grove lump, which is supposedly good stuff, but again new to me. I filled the ring up as high as it would go and I probably only managed to get maybe 13 lbs of the 20lb bag in there. It might be time for a tall ring, we'll see. The 20lb bag was $15, so not bad.
It's 24F and gusting to 30mph and flurries off and on. The unit has been up and running on battery out in the cold since Tuesday.
Here's the link if you want to watch, how exciting. Gauge 3 is ambient temp...
http://nailbuster.com/thingspeak/in...=206188&thingurl=api.thingspeak.com&thingInt=
My first actual cook is going on right now... 13lb brisket flat. Going with just an empty foiled pan, I've never done that before. I'm also running the Grove lump, which is supposedly good stuff, but again new to me. I filled the ring up as high as it would go and I probably only managed to get maybe 13 lbs of the 20lb bag in there. It might be time for a tall ring, we'll see. The 20lb bag was $15, so not bad.
It's 24F and gusting to 30mph and flurries off and on. The unit has been up and running on battery out in the cold since Tuesday.
Here's the link if you want to watch, how exciting. Gauge 3 is ambient temp...
http://nailbuster.com/thingspeak/in...=206188&thingurl=api.thingspeak.com&thingInt=
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Holy cow I had to tape over the bottom vents on the WSM. I'm trying to run at 270F, but it would fluctuate 20 degrees in mere seconds! I love seeing that data, I never would have seen that with the smoothing that the Maverick had built in. I put some foil tape over the vents and it seems to be much more stable now.
I'm only using the heatermeter base board with the AVR and probe interfaces with an ESP8266. There is no linkmeter/pi/wrt-anything on it, so I would have to write the code for PitDroid to see. It doesn't seem like it would take much to do that, but I haven't done it yet.
Ah.... I missed that skimming through. Yes, you'd need to pretty much pull all of the port 80 support code.
Although.... <scratches head>.....I haven't dug into the underlying system (no reason to. Yet.) There's a service running that serves up HTTP through port 80. The HM web page is implemented on top of that. Hrrrm.
Although.... <scratches head>.....I haven't dug into the underlying system (no reason to. Yet.) There's a service running that serves up HTTP through port 80. The HM web page is implemented on top of that. Hrrrm.