Steve wrote:That's a great thread. One of the other guys has built an Arduino based controller for a pellet smoker.
WavesI think there are at least two of us here.
At the present stage, I still haven't spent any time on the actual PID-like code for it. My halfway house (originally intended for testing of the hardware) gave me the ability to both monitor the temperatures and control the pellet feed timing remotely over my network. As virtually all of of my low-and-slow cooks are during the day, when I am working in my office upstairs, this has proved to be all I needed. If I see the smoker is running cool or hot, I can tweak it from my desk, plus I am not restricted to just the three feed levels of the 3-way controller.
I do still intend to write auto-controlling code, but it is not a priority. What is more of a priority is soldering the pins up and putting it in a box, as - a year later - I am still using it assembled on a breadboard.
For times when I am out there cooking with guests (burgers, steaks etc), I don't even bother with my controller. I just unplug it, and the grill reverts back to the 3-way.
Steve wrote:My next project is a Raspberry Pi based controller, that will give me the remote control over WiFi. however it's one for Winter, when hopefully I can get a Raspberry Pi
The moment I heard of the Raspberry Pi, my first thought was "shall I dump my Arduino and start again"? No good reason to, other than "new toy" appeal.
However, when I checked (and I admit it was only a cursory check), I thought I confirmed that the Raspberry Pi only has digital input/output onboard, and for analog I/O (i.e. for input from temperature probes), you would need to buy and add additional kit. Unless I am mistaken, of course, which is very possible.
On the other hand, the Arduino has a surfeit of both digital and analog I/O, and all you need to connect a standard probe is a suitable resistance from the analog pin to ground. My initial design had one grill probe and three food probes, although I have only implemented one of each so far.
So while the Raspberry Pi gives you the luxury of a full Linux server to play with, and a multitude of programming languages, the Arduino makes the hardware design a lot simpler, in my opinion.
However, I'm not saying the Raspberry Pi shouldn't be used, as I am extremely interested in what folk will come up with!