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Firing up for the first time

A project log for Smokey Mc Smokerson

Automated barbecue and smoker on a budget

hackershubHackersHub 09/14/2019 at 16:400 Comments

The day has come that it has come alive.

First things first is determining the temperature offset. As the sensors which are used to determine the barrel temperature are in the skin of the barrel, the smoker was lit in the standard setup with the deflector in the center and the meat probe lying on the grill. By getting it up to temperature, around 110 degrees, and cutting the fan and seeing where the temperature settles. Just by looking at the difference between the meat probe and the barrel temperature we can determine the offset. In my case, around 24 degrees.

Immediately we found some improvements:

- A coal chute, this was already in the design but not implemented yet.

- Uneven burn, the fan is powerful enough and even at a 0% duty cycle it is on. But as it just blows on one side of the coals basket, it mainly burns the coals on that side. On top of that, the coal basket does not have holes in the bottom. So first step is to add holes on the bottom and if that's not enough well have to make some kind of deflector that forces the air into the bottom of the basket.

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