Temperature above setpoint and open lid question

[Dwayne Blew]

I'm thoroughly enjoying my HM, it's getting a lot of use. One thing I've been trying to figure out is when the temperature is above the setpoint, and I open the lid, the HM detects the falling temperature and kicks the fan on, but because the temperature is still above the setpoint, the "open lid" mode doesn't get triggered. I have the open lid threshold set to 6%, which works well if the temp is actually where it's supposed to be.

I get a pretty good overshoot on startup, though that's probably because I set the setpoint to my desired temperature rather than an intermediate one, will try adding an alarm or two to progressively ramp up the setpoints, but that's kind of a pain when cooking at different temperatures almost every time.

Is there a way to get the HM to trigger open lid mode if the temperature falls X% within Y seconds instead, rather than going by the setpoint?

 

[Bryan Mayland]

It's all based on the setpoint, HeaterMeter doesn't do peak tracking at all. I understand your scenario but it's not really logical to say "if the temeprature ever drops 6% from any point in X time period, go into lid mode" because what if you had overshoot and the temperature started to come back down and it would kick in lid mode. At that point the temp would drop further, and when it turned back on the temp would overshoot again, repeat.

I almost always push the button to the left to toggle manual lid mode, then open the top. The blower doesn't kick up at all.

You might also want to try setting your max startup fan speed to lower than 100%. My dad used to do a stepped startup as well: set it to 180F wait for it to get there, set it to 200F, wait, set it to 225F. Now he just sets the max startup fan speed to 50% and directly sets 225F. He said the overshoot was significantly reduced. Why doesn't my dad, the guy with HeaterMeter #2 (and others) have a servo damper? "I don't want to mess with all that!"

 

[Dwayne Blew]

Thank you for the advice, Bryan!

I have to admit that being able to manually trigger the open lid mode completely slipped my mind... seems like the obvious solution. I'll do that in the future.

I'll also try lowering the startup fan speed next time. I built RalphTrimble's ping pong valve damper a few weeks ago and have been using that, works well so far, but I did email him last week regarding a RotoDamper setup, just haven't followed up on it. I enjoy tinkering and modifying things, that's half the attraction of the HM. Since the valve works, I think easing up on the fan speed might be the ticket. Thanks again!