Build Your Own BBQ Controller (w/Wifi)

[Drunk_J]

What would be neat is if there was a small compartment, say on the back side of the case, were the connection jacks would be behind a door. It could have a silicone edge on it to seal where the wire poked through. But honestly, as long as the connections are on the bottom of the case, I think a simple ziplock works great. I have used my Procom through some very nasty down pours with zero issues.

-=J

[Drunk_J]

Just for information, if anyone is interested in the TC-4 arduino thermocouple shield, I recieved an email today from the person who makes them and they will be available very soon. He has a reflow setup and sells the boards with surface mount chips already installed.

http://www.mlgp-llc.com/arduino/public/arduino-pcb.html

-=J

[Drunk_J]

More Stoker research! For the temp probe, they are using a TypeK thermocouple attached to external sense resistor (Vss & Sns) on the DS2762 high precision Li battery monitor chip ( External Sense Resistor Configuration: 15.625µV LSB and ±64mV Dynamic Range ). I have attached one bad drawing and a couple of bad pics of the probe configuration....yes I cannot draw or take decent photos...so there.

If by chance Majestik is bored at work and viewing this thread, you can just barely make it out on the first pic in the flash, me sitting there in my underwear taking this pic!! I know, that you know, that I know you wanted that info.

-=J

[Syzygies]

Is your probe really that short?

[Drunk_J]

Alright....I don't see any smilies or anything, but you had to bring out the short probe jokes didn't you? I will have you know my probe is at least above average!

-=J

[Drunk_J]

Along these lines, aren't some $30 wireless routers running full-blown, open-source Linux? Hmm, memory, power, all the wireless hardware is already there, just a question of patching in some more IO.

I have a WRT54G (old Linksys Router) that runs DDWRT which is an open source firmware based on the Linux kernel. But there is not much processing power to act as a controller and very little memory (as the firmware pretty much fills it up). Don't see how it is possible to add IO in a usable form for our purpose?

-=J

My appologies Syzygies, it appears you were right on the router deal. Unfortunately the version I have is the newer one with less memory (v6). But they still use an Arduino for I/O.

Anyway, check this out for a WRT54G/Arduino controlled cooker.
http://tvwbb.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/927 ... 7691098906

-=J

[Drunk_J]

A new manu now has an Arduino Uno clone base board with Wifi built in. It is $73, but it saves the space of having to add a Wifi shield on top of the Arduino.

http://www.cutedigi.com/product_info.ph ... ts_id=4570

Also, anyone interested in the project but feels more comfortable using C#, here is a Microcontroller running .Net and it is Arduino size/shield comaptible.

http://www.cutedigi.com/product_info.ph ... d3871c75d7

-=J

[Drunk_J]

Also, did a Cal check on the TC4 thermocouple shield with a Ametek temperature calibrator using a TypeT thermocouple (from BBQ Guru) and the TypeT library. Here are the results.

http://www.mlgp-llc.com/arduino/public/arduino-pcb.html

Degrees F
Cal -------- TC-4
0-----------2 (did this one just for the hell of it, but had to leave it for a while to get there)
50-----------51
75-----------74
100----------100
125----------125
150----------150
175----------174
200----------199
225----------224
250----------249

Unfortunately, the model calibrator I used only allows up to 250 degrees F. But I think the results show enough of the usable range. And with none of our usable points being off by more than 1 degree F, I think that is more than accurate enough.

-=J

[CapnBry]

Hey! I found this thread Googling for other Arduino-based BBQ controllers. I too have built one with WiFi called HeaterMeter.

There used to be a WiFi card called a WiShield that I used but the company went out of business. You can build your own replacement but it would require surface mount components. I found that the standard Arduino with all the code needed to hold a TCP stack and a basic web server took up way too much space to use the Arduino PROGMEM to store the web page served. To get around that I used a Atmel dataflash chip and served from there. The chip 2MB but I used about 20k of it.

I thought I'd link the thread, you might want to steal some ideas from it:
http://tvwbb.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/927 ... 5341028906

That was good but there wasn't enough storage space or horsepower to make graphs, and hell you gotta have graphs right? Now I'm working with another forum member to use an old Linksys WRT54GL as a host system with the Arduino connected internally in a project called LinkMeter.
http://tvwbb.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/927 ... 7691098906

And of course a screenshot in operation. Everything comes from AJAX data pulls, the graph and readouts update every few seconds.


Good luck with your project, I might steal some ideas from you myself

[Drunk_J]

Hahaha, talk about timing....I just downloaded your code this morning! Your project looks great and really well thought out program/features. I am hoping to figure out how to incorporate your program to use the TC4 shield and LCD expansion board, which is another really neat and well thought out project by the Home Roaster guys. http://www.mlgp-llc.com/arduino/public/arduino-pcb.html

I picked up a Wifi shield put out by Sparkfun. No extra memory on it, but the TC4 does have a built in eeprom. Also, the Sparkfun shield has some extra space for additional circuits.
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9954

-=J

[jdbower]

Just a slight tangent, looks like it may soon be trivial to interface an Arduino-based device with an Android device:
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/0 ... od-tm.html

[Drunk_J]

Just a slight tangent, looks like it may soon be trivial to interface an Arduino-based device with an Android device:
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/0 ... od-tm.html

Even easier smoker setpoint changes and monitoring?

[jdbower]

The interface is initially USB, then Bluetooth. But I can't see why it wouldn't be able to be extended to WiFi or even 3G/4G. Seems like there should be a method of pushing data to the phone/tablet and writing data to the controller.

Of course, the real purpose is to have an open standard so you can build neat things like controlling your phone's music player via your car. Open standards are nice that way

[Drunk_J]

Thanks to CapnBry, his controller is awesome! Here are some pics of a bread board mockup, with the fan output currently going to the big green LED and the probe input being fooled with a thermistor/resistor combo until I actually get them in. Hope soon to get in the probes and give this controller the real smoke test. Couple of neat features that CapnBry already incorporated is the lid open detection (and manual ability to do so) and pause on ramp up to temp setpoint (which can cause over shoot otherwise). Also, instead of the on-off 6sec control that most BBQ controllers use now, his uses a PWM output to actually vary the fan speed!

Going to have to do some code changes to get my Sparkfun WiFly shield working in place of the AsyncLab Wifi shield that CapnBry used (they went out of business and that card is no longer available). I already had the shield serving up a web page from my TC4 thermocouple shield....so hopefully, something soon.

-=J

Considering the number of years it has been since I breadboarded something like this....it is not quite as big a rat's nest and ugly as I thought it would be. Next step....enclosure!

[CapnBry]

Lookin' good, man! Wow, look at the size of that LCD. I bet you can put all sorts of information on there.