Wireless Probes


 
M

Mike W in Chicago

New member
When going through the config section, I got the feeling that there was a possibility of adding a wireless probe, be it either meat or pit. Unfortunately, I couldn't find much documentation about wireless probes out there.

I think the wireless probes may be fun to experiment with instead of having all these wires all over the place. Does anybody have any additional information about this? Maybe a Manufacturer? Maybe it's there for a future enhancement?

Thanks!
 
Only wireless probes I've seen are the Meater:
https://meater.com/

I invested in their kickstarter more than 2 years ago and I still haven't received my probes and block. I think wireless that can withstand cooking temps is much more difficult than they thought it would be. I'd stick with the wired stuff which is known to work much better until technology improves enough for this feature to become doable within acceptable tolerances.
 
interesting. I've seen several poeple in facebook groups using the meater giving it sub par reviews. I too think wireless inside a bbq grill is pushing it. I feel like an old man saying this, but I'll take a wire over wireless most any day when given the choice. If you want a cleaner look maybe look into the RotoDamper3 and the board that allows you to connect your probes to the RD3 and put the heatermeter inside.
 
You can do wireless probes on the Heatermeter. A older version of the Heatermeter has a spot for a wifi board. You had to solder the board onto the Heatermeter and have another board soldered on the probe side of setup. It needed to have a battery of some sorts on the probe.
I still have one of the old heatermeters that I have a soldered board attached to it.
 
I think the last HM board that had the solder pads for the wireless probe was HMv4.1. Here is a link to the page for that version, https://github.com/CapnBry/HeaterMeter/wiki/HeaterMeter-4.1-Hardware , if you scroll down near the bottom you will see info there about the optional wireless probe board. Although the solder pads were removed from the HM board on recent versions I believe the function remained, I think the HMv4.2 had a header to wire in the remote board, I'm not sure if the 4.3 has the header or not.
I'm not completely sure if the software still supports this, but I recall Bryan saying he was one of the few people who actually use that feature, so it seems likely it is still hidden there.
Hopefully Bryan will chime in to confirm and give info on how you would wire it up.
 
ChrisMueller said:
interesting. I've seen several poeple in facebook groups using the meater giving it sub par reviews. I too think wireless inside a bbq grill is pushing it. I feel like an old man saying this, but I'll take a wire over wireless most any day when given the choice. If you want a cleaner look maybe look into the RotoDamper3 and the board that allows you to connect your probes to the RD3 and put the heatermeter inside.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I kind of agree with you. Wireless has been kind of flaky for many things. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, then I get frustrated with it all. I saw something about the wireless option and thought maybe there was a better way instead of having all these wires go all over the place.

Besides, I already invested in the wired probes. Looks like I'll keep them!
 
The problem is that the probes still have the wires, they're just not wired directly to the HeaterMeter any more, they're wired to a transmitter board. All the software is still in place but the 4.3 board removed the expansion header to connect it directly. I meant to go back and add it in as the last step but I completely forgot about it but I figured nobody would ever miss it. It can still be just wired directly on top of the ATmega because the pins aren't used by anything else still. I think most of people's enthusiasm for "wireless probes" drops off once they realize they're still wired, just to something else.

I have a Meater myself from the kickstarter, but it has never actually been used in my grill or the app even installed on my phone. I was hoping it would just show up as a bluetooth serial device we could pull the data from (using a Pi 3 or Zero W's bluetooth) but they have their own vendor-guid for the advertised service so I wasn't sure how to get the data out of it. I put it aside and never got back to it. I feel a little sorry for them because they are still busting their butts trying to complete their product launch and running into problems at every turn. It is an amazing device if they can pull it off though because it is sort of the holy grail of HeaterMeter: just stuffing a wireless probe into a piece of meat and getting the pit and food temps at the controller.

EDIT: I should also say that if folks are interested in more information about the wireless probes I can get into a little greater detail if there are questions. The documentation on them never really got fleshed out due to so few people ever building them. It's a vicious cycle!
 
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