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First Live Test

A project log for BBQ Thermostat

A board-controlled temp probe and fan to maintain temperature during a long smoke or BBQ

ericeric 12/16/2019 at 00:530 Comments

Today I was smoking a turkey so I figured it was a good time to do a live test of my project. There was good news and bad news. I think it's illustrated quite well by the following graph:

On the good news front:

On the bad news front:

So it seems like I've at least got a WiFi problem to solve. But when I've left it going in the computer room in the past I've seemed to have seen it conk out sooner than I'd prefer for a smoker application. (Conk out as in refuse to continue sending data or losing the connection to the SSID, not turn off or something.


I've added in a timestamp to the MQTT to influx Python script so that I can truly see when the final message came through. While testing at my desk I may also need to temporarily lift the restriction I made for not sending bogus temps in order to know for sure whether it's lost the WiFi or whether it's just not finding legit values to send.

So I'm pretty encouraged, even if things aren't right where I want them to be yet.

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