Sawdustguy
02-02-2008, 09:30 PM
The weather here on Long Island got up to 45* so it was time to get out and build the charcoal basket for the new Spicewine custom cooker. We built the charcoal basket in a "U" shape in about 2 hours. The overall dimensions were 20" by 20" by 6" height.
http://www.2fatpolocksbbq.com/webimages/basketg.gif
When we finished the charcoal basket it was time for us to fire up the Spicewine to season her. We used two whole cans of Pam cooking spray and sprayed every internal surface except of course the charcoal pan and catcher. We put the charcoal basket into the cooker and filled it up.
It was a good test for our new setup which includes a BBQ Stoker. Last week I had made a circular aluminum plate and milled some holes for fitting the stoker to the Spicewine. We attached the Stoker to the cooker and connected the Stoker to a Linksys wireless lan hub. Setup was a snap and we were on our way.
We (My nephew and I) had written some custom software for the Stoker and it was a good chance to give it a test. We started the fire and set the Stoker for 400*. It took about an hour to get up to 400* and the Stoker held temp at 400* +/- 2* for about 7 hours (per our cooker temperature time vs. temperature graph) before the cooker started cooling down. We had excellent correlation with the Spicewine thermometers. I was never quite able to get the large Spicewine up that high in temp with charcoal and we noticed the Stoker 25 cfm fan is much more powerful than the Guru 25 cfm fan. While we were running, we were able to do some software testing. One of the more critical tests were were able to get some data on is door open overshoot. I thing we have enough data so we can write a decent algorithm to prevent an overshoot when opening and closing the cooker door.
The base software is pretty much done. We are still knee deep in writing some of the modules which include:
1> Graph of Meat vs Temp for all 4 meat temp probes.
2> Graph of cooker Temp vs Time.
3> A speech alarm when meat has reached Temp and the meat Temp.
4> Text Msgs sent to your phone with meat and cooker Temps. (Aircard Required)
5> Door open and close overshoot algorithm.
6> User friendly GUI
7> anything else we think may be useful.
We were going to give the software away along with the source code so we would not have to support the software but I think we will charge a nominal fee and put up a support forum so people can get the maximum out of the software. The fee will pay for the support forum and a very tiny bit for our time.
http://www.2fatpolocksbbq.com/webimages/basketg.gif
When we finished the charcoal basket it was time for us to fire up the Spicewine to season her. We used two whole cans of Pam cooking spray and sprayed every internal surface except of course the charcoal pan and catcher. We put the charcoal basket into the cooker and filled it up.
It was a good test for our new setup which includes a BBQ Stoker. Last week I had made a circular aluminum plate and milled some holes for fitting the stoker to the Spicewine. We attached the Stoker to the cooker and connected the Stoker to a Linksys wireless lan hub. Setup was a snap and we were on our way.
We (My nephew and I) had written some custom software for the Stoker and it was a good chance to give it a test. We started the fire and set the Stoker for 400*. It took about an hour to get up to 400* and the Stoker held temp at 400* +/- 2* for about 7 hours (per our cooker temperature time vs. temperature graph) before the cooker started cooling down. We had excellent correlation with the Spicewine thermometers. I was never quite able to get the large Spicewine up that high in temp with charcoal and we noticed the Stoker 25 cfm fan is much more powerful than the Guru 25 cfm fan. While we were running, we were able to do some software testing. One of the more critical tests were were able to get some data on is door open overshoot. I thing we have enough data so we can write a decent algorithm to prevent an overshoot when opening and closing the cooker door.
The base software is pretty much done. We are still knee deep in writing some of the modules which include:
1> Graph of Meat vs Temp for all 4 meat temp probes.
2> Graph of cooker Temp vs Time.
3> A speech alarm when meat has reached Temp and the meat Temp.
4> Text Msgs sent to your phone with meat and cooker Temps. (Aircard Required)
5> Door open and close overshoot algorithm.
6> User friendly GUI
7> anything else we think may be useful.
We were going to give the software away along with the source code so we would not have to support the software but I think we will charge a nominal fee and put up a support forum so people can get the maximum out of the software. The fee will pay for the support forum and a very tiny bit for our time.