A few of us have been doing stuff with arduinos (and others, I realise, with Raspberry Pi).
There is an indiegogo project going on at the moment, with 9 days left, offering an arduino, with additional components, for 12 dollars including international shipping. It gets even cheaper if you buy more than one.
Thought it worth a mention here, in case anyone wants to have a play. For any serious BBQ project, you will eventually need additional items (either a network, wifi or bluetooth card for anything useful), but this is an extremely cheap way to dip your toe in the water. Although I already have one, I have just ordered 3 more, at that price.

