Rocks Stoker

I've got a bit of experience. What do you need to know?

Ask away I have one on my Lang84

Sigh...Almost makes me wanna buy a unit I can use one on.

How many times have you used this?

I'm thinking of getting one.

Get a Digi QII ,better than Stoker and their customer service is top notc h ! Also when you order from them on line or by phone they will actuallyu send you what you pay for in a timely manner,you will never get that from Rock's.

bbqczar said:

Get a Digi QII ,better than Stoker and their customer service is top notc h ! Also when you order from them on line or by phone they will actuallyu send you what you pay for in a timely manner,you will never get that from Rock's.

Click to expand...

Hope this helps dial in the one you have.

Balls Casten said:

Long story short .. I'm still dialing in the opening between my firebox and the cooking chamber. My last test burn worked great until the charcoalcoal kind of took off and temps went from 220 to 233. (Much better than the 60 degree swing when I started.)

Question is when temps started droping from the 233 mark. It cooled down past the 220 target temp to 210 before the blower kicked on.

Is that normal? How tight or how much should my temps fluctuate.

Below is the test burn with 18lbs of charcoal with the stoker set at 220.

Click to expand...

I have had that same problem with my Stoker unit as have lots of others,the temps go way below target temp before blower kicks on.The Stoker units have several undesireable quircks and problems with them.If you want to run multiplesmokers than the Stoker does that,the Digi QII won't,but the Digi Q II is basically flawless in performance and their customer service is great.The Stokers customer service is basically non-existant.

I must be lucky. I would take a stoker over guru anyday, just for the tech toys associated.

Any problems or help i needed, I got from John at Rocks BBQ and that included a LONG call while I was cooking as he helped be dial the stoker in. he did take some time to get some stuff out once, but he made good on it in the end.

anyway.. what i found about the stoker so far..

Without door detection turned on, it will let the temps drop for a while before putting the fan on. This stops the fan from stoking the fire when the doors open, only to have a blaze going when u close the pit and then overshoot because the fire got to hot. I believe its actually calculating the drop % over time. With door detection on, this doesnt happen.

What kind of pit are u using it on? Firebox damper should be shut, and exhaust open just a little. to much, and you jus t blow the heat right out, too little your food oversmokes and the fire chokes out. From the look of your graph, I would say you need to open the exhaust a little more.

Set initial temp 10-15 degrees LOWER than your target. This allows the fire to settle down and not overshoot. Once its on, it will pulse off on on. few seconds on, few seconds off. If temps begin to drop, the pulsing stops and it begins to ramp up, only coming on full throttle when temps are about 10 degrees below target.

Once u get your damper settings dialed in, the stoker will maintain temps within 2 degrees for as long as your fuel holds out.
.

Wasn't someone with the help af a nephew writing software for the stoker?

Anyone here that has a stoker and doesn't like it let me know. I'm in the market for one.
PM me.

Want to put one on my fridged stumpy clone that I'm building

Hope this post is OK and within guidelines

Norcoredneck said:

Wasn't someone with the help af a nephew writing software for the stoker?

Click to expand...

thats was sawdustguy. Dont think it ever got all the bugs worked out.

I have to agree that Rocks customer service is very poor, at least for me it was. Everything from placing the order and never knowing if it was received or shipped until the day I came home from work with a Stoker on my door a month later, to questions about this exact issue, to trying to order an adapter for my BWS Party, was a very bad experience. It almost put me totally off of the product and sold it, but the buyer backed out and I ended up keeping it. I am a tech head and love all the cool things you can do with it, but must admit I havent used it in months. Sorry for the rant, but my experience was bad enough I feel obligated to warn people whenever this issue comes up. I know Im not the only one, have read of MANY similar experiences around the web. It has been about 10 months since I last tried to deal with them or looked into this, so hopefully it has gotten better since then.

Anyways, to the question at hand. I have experienced this same issue many times. To me it seems to be a bug, but as mentioned it happens less without the door detection on, but still happens to me. I have had it go as low as 50' below the setpoint before it finally kicked back on. This problem was a bigger issue when using my big offset trailer smoker. When this bug presented itself it tends to let the wood fire snuff out. Hasnt been as big of an issue on the backwoods.

One tip I can mention, if you notice that the fan should be on but its not, kick the setpoint up or down a degree, save the change, and it will kick on instantly.

I have not had time to address it, but the stoker I purchased used from Sawdustguy seems to be malfunctioning. The fan would not shut off when temperature was reached, I had to quickly swap it out for the regular butterfly vent. It my be months before I use the Spicewine and the stoker again as I use my Oval and a Guru competitor for all personal needs in the winter.

The stoker is used and I have used it with success in the past. But my temps overshot almost 50 degrees and dinner was done over an early. I may try and play with it, if anyone has troubleshooting advice.

Rockaway BeachBQ said:

I have not had time to address it, but the stoker I purchased used from Sawdustguy seems to be malfunctioning. The fan would not shut off when temperature was reached, I had to quickly swap it out for the regular butterfly vent. It my be months before I use the Spicewine and the stoker again as I use my Oval and a Guru competitor for all personal needs in the winter.

The stoker is used and I have used it with success in the past. But my temps overshot almost 50 degrees and dinner was done over an early. I may try and play with it, if anyone has troubleshooting advice.

Click to expand...

Did the fan get wet? I have been using the stoker without any problems for 2 years. At Sayville one of the fans got drenched in a monsoon we had Now it does the same thing that you are describing. I have contacted him in the past and never had a problem.

BBQchef33 said:

Once u get your damper settings dialed in, the stoker will maintain temps within 2 degrees for as long as your fuel holds out.
.

Click to expand...

Works as long as YOU dont fuss with it or when I have to fix it for you:tongue: