Thanks Chris. Your tansparency shows respect for the customer. The process to get to where you need to get is an opportunity to build customer trust, as you seem to be doing. Good luck!
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Second cook
I did my second cook with this tonight. SWMBO requested stuffed peppers. So stuffed peppers on the grill was supper tonight. Setup was easier tonight - I actually remembered how to do it from 2 days ago.
I placed the peppers on the grill and inserted the thermometer in the smallest one. The thermo connected with the base immediately once I turned the base on. The way I use a thermometer is to try to get it in the center of whatever, but after the temp starts to rise a bit, I move the thermometer around a bit looking for the lowest temp I can find. The Combustion was already tracking time to done when I moved it. The ground beef was so loose that the thermo didn't want to stay where I placed it. I removed it from the meat and reinserted it. The base has a small area in the lower right that displays time to done and when I removed the thermo, the temp dropped. When I reinserted it, the temp displayed correctly, but the time to done showed "WTF". Just kidding on that, but it did take several minutes for it to readjust and the peppers were ready 30 seconds before the predicted finish. That was good enough for me. Actually, I set a stopwatch on my phone because I thought the base would continue to adjust the time to done function, and it did. I just wanted to see how it would do. Next time I will try to remember to set a stop watch when the prediction first appears. I'm not complaining - just curious. It's designed to correct itself as it has more data.
chefchrisyoung I want to thank you for producing what appears to be a solidt product. I am very happy so far. Your participation here shows an interest in getting this thing right. I do expect a bump or two along the way, but from what I have seen so far, I expect your team to fix whatever bumps occur. I also appreciate your openness in discussing what is going on, and I hope you find time to continue participating here.Comment
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RonB glad the second cook went well.
One thing, you shouldn't need to move the probe around trying to find the lowest temperature, once a cook starts and the thermometer stops running in instant read mode ("instant" stops showing on the display) the algorithm will select among the sensors to find the true thermal core temperature (somewhat obviously we call this TrueCore technology). So when the display is showing Core during a cook, it's already using the lowest temperature sensor for its predictions.
Eventually we expect to get instant read working with True Core so that even when providing an instant reading, it's selecting the sensor that's closet to the core.
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They already deliver to EU and other countries but at least for me the total cost including freight and Swedish taxes is a bit off putting.
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Thanks Gunbe Yes i thought so.. Everyting cost's the white out of the eye regarding P&P/VAT etc..
It's expencive to be an Scandinavian with bbq-interests.. :-/ -
We do ship to most European countries and collect the required VAT and international shipping fees. Unfortunately, the combination of a strong US dollar and the VAT makes it more expensive than is ideal, but it's the only way a small company like Combustion can support international customers at this time.
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As someone who isn't happy with my meater+, I'll bite. On for 2 probes now.Comment
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Worked as expected cooking a few ribeyes on the pk360. Monitoring the surface temp and adjusting accordingly I was able to nail edge to edge doneness. I really looking forward to trying it out with the KBQ. I'm looking forward to the app for android because it would be nice to be able to see all three temp readings without having to cycle through button presses.Comment
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I must have missed something today when I used mine for a several hour Prime Rib cook in my Yoder 640 as I only saw a percentage til done indicator and never did see a predicted time til done display. Only when I reached my set point of 118 and the display showed “Enjoy” did any indication of time show on the screen and that appeared to be a timer. Did I miss a button press or mode somehow?Comment
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There is a known bug in the Prediction Engine where very low-and-slow cooks never make a prediction. It happens when the temperature rise is low enough that the algorithm thinks the total cooking time is too long to be correct and so it abandons making a prediction. We think we've isolated what's tripping it up and we're working on a fix to be released in a few weeks. -
I read that on your website but in this case I was running the cooker at 400F with an ambient average of about 375F. I was cooking 2 Prime Ribs simultaneously with one connected to a Fireboard and the other to yours, so I’m sure of the average ambient. Total cooking time was just less than 3 hours. The good thing was the cuts appeared to be cooking at about the same rate and their core temperatures were only 4 degrees apart through the cook. chefchrisyoung
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The Combustion thermometer did an outstanding job today. It was really handy to see all three temps across both probes (core, surface, and ambient ) update in near real-time. I checked the meat temps with the instant Thermopop and they were accurate.
No issues with connectivity in the house with the PK300 at the end of the driveway.
This was all I expected it to do well at this stage so happy to see it worked well.
The predictions were well off but I didn’t expect them to be accurate at this point given the release notes. I put the meat on the smoker at 1pm.
The prime rib updated maybe three times from 1 hour originally to 25 minutes to 30 seconds when it reached 119 or so. The initial projections were given at about 1:30pm and it reached 120 at 3:40pm. Initially set it to predict 120 when the meat was at 73 or so.
The pork brisket was even further off. Initial prediction request was set to 200 when the meat was in the 70s. Originally it said 1 hour to done at 1:30pm then switched to 3:24 hours to done as the meat hit the low 120s. It never shifted off that 3:24 as the meat hit the 180s and I pulled in the 190s at 5pm.
I am hoping that I can rename my thermometers from the random numbers they are now at some point so I can call it “prime rib” and “pork brisket” and I understand that is in progress.
I was also expecting the second thermometer to turn off once I pulled it out of the prime rib and placed it back in its cradle. However. It looks like you need to shut down the display unit to turn both off. I’d have to look at it again later to make sure it won’t turn both on every time I cook even if I am just using one probe as that strikes me as burning batteries. I am guessing I’d need to turn the display unit off and on again to reset to one active probe.
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Thanks for the detailed feedback. BBQ that involves a prolonged stall is going to throw the predictions off right now. The shorter term solution will be to avoid making predictions at all until the surface temperature of the food is close to the target, since you'll never reach the target if the surface isn't at least that hot. This is, admittedly, a bit of a hack. Longer term, we're going to need to get to the second generation of the algorithm that can reasonably predict the stall behavior. -
As for the second probe turning off, when put into the charging sleeve, it stays active for 30 seconds (this prevents accidental shut offs that would wipe out the logged data) and the display will continue to show the last transmitted data for another 30 seconds before it times out. If it's still not turning off, make sure the rear contact is clean so that there is a good electrical connection to shut things off. -
chefchrisyoung thanks so much for the tips. I will have to give them a shot on the predictions and check on the cradle and probes next time I do a cook.
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I think my base unit has a glitch. I tried to use it tonight, but all I get is a hexagon marching back and forth across the screen. This is regardless of whether the thermometer is in it's dock or not. I read everything I thought had a remote chance of helping, and I did a reset, but that did not help. And I recharged both the probe and the base, err - timer.
I tried contacting Combustion, but the links for both help and email are not working, (Win 10 & chrome).
Oops - I found the help email, but it is not hot linked for me. I will sen an email now...Comment
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OK folks. A couple of emails back and forth, and a new unit is on the way - in less than 24 hours. They have asked for me to return the old unit, (on their $$), so they can run diagnostics.
I am not happy that it failed, but I am very happy with the way it has been handled.
My thanks to Chris and his team.Comment
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I'm looking to expand our beta-testing group at Combustion Inc. I'm especially interested in adding a few folks who regularly cook low-and-slow BBQ. What I'll be asking beta-testers to do is cook things, preferably meat or seafood, and then export the data and send it to us, along with some before and after photos, and some details about the cook. We'll be using this data to help train our next generation of the Prediction Engine.
It would be best if cook pretty often, are reasonably experienced at controlling your cook, and you're pretty organized about things because the quality of the data we get is really, really important for it to be useful.
If you're interested, please send me an email to [email protected].
UPDATE: Right now we’re looking for folks who already have a Combustion Inc. Predictive Thermometer. We’re still working through a backlog of orders and do not have extra thermometers to give away for beta testing.
Last edited by chefchrisyoung; January 5, 2023, 06:32 PM.Comment
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My apologies to Combustion Inc. I should have posted this earlier.
It appears that the problems I thought I was having with mine were user error. I kept trying to get it to work, and I finally got it going. I thought I had let it full discharge as they asked me to do, but apparently I did not. Anyway, after I left the thermometer out of the charging case 12 - 14 hour, and recharged it, it started working just fine. After getting it to work, I left it out of the charging case and tested it every hour or two until it stopped working. I then charged it, and it worked as advertised.
I am still very happy with it, but not so much with the operator.
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Thanks chefchrisyoung for keeping us informed. To our members: I have known Chris for years. In case you are not aware, he was a major contributor to the landmark 6 book set "Modernist Cuisine" and was a leader of the development team for Joule, the best sous vide machine. And I am probably understating his role in both projects.
He is a serious chef/scientist and I for one thin his thermometer is a game changer. I am not at all surprised that version 1 needs tweaking but I am confident in Chris and I suspect that version 1.1 will be better, and 2.0 will be better still.
Our electrical engineer/thermometer tester Bill McGrath is awaiting a unit to test but Chris want to make sure it is rock solid first. Hang in there.Comment
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FYI I offered to test and when I hit send, realized I don’t own this yet. Chris wrote me back and stated as such. But, they are backordered, so I won’t be able to order until about mid to late February.Comment
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Chris,
I did notice what I think you’ve called the TrueCore
working though. The ThermoPop was probing 116–118 but never lower than the Combustion at 116. It is a handy feature for sure. For reference, I believe the TrueCore feature is selecting the lowest temp across its multiple monitors to display as the real temp of the meat.Last edited by STEbbq; January 7, 2023, 11:09 AM.Comment
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Yes the True Core looks at all the sensors and locates the thermal center. It's a bit more complex than just choose the lowest temperature sensor though, since that approach fails when food is resting and the surface can end up cooler than the center.
One big benefit of this over other wireless thermometers is that this lets the thermometer work in both really large and really small foods and always have a sensor near the true center.
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I'd voulnteer, but I don't do much low and slow cookin'.
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