Bizzare Thermoworks Smoke Issue

[smokenoob]

yes HawkerXP retirement has it’s perks

[HawkerXP]

I can't wait until the day all I need my meter for is to measure the resistance of catsup.

[Stuey1515]

KISS, change the batteries and go from there mate. My Maverik XR decided my little COS was wildly swinging temps 50-70 degrees until I change the batteries haha

[Bkhuna]

I work at a large laboratory and have checked my Thermoworks probes against traceable standards. Every one has been ± 2°. I'd say that's accurate enough for barbeque.

[Bkhuna]

Michael_in_TX Weird Science. I'm waiting to see if a large mutant tomato destroys his house.

[Michael_in_TX]

Science!

[Richard Chrz]

I happen to be the non fan of Thermoworks probes. They are really not accurate to me, I’d keep temping everything, their hand helds seem reliable.

[smokenoob]

Well I believe the probes are based on measuring the electrical parameter "resistance".
So if you somehow gummed up the probe connections with BBQ sauce you could have lowered the resistance into the circuit. Just to check I got out some ketchup (didn’t have any sweet Baby Rays on hand but figured they would be close) and noted the resistive properties... measured 16K ohms, yep, coulda fooled yer Smoke so clean it up and try again!
My probes measure 100K ohms at ambient and 2K ohms when heated with hairdryer. So when ya gummed it up, smoke thought it was hotter.
disclaimer: I been drinkin so may be off by orders of magnitude! But I did see the space shuttle go buy again tonight!

[Michael_in_TX]

I took a closer look at the Smoke tonight. I seem to have handled it with my gloves on after putting the butt on as there were some bits of rub on the side with the ports. I wonder if just a stray piece of brown sugar was my undoing.

If it were a battery issue, I would expect to have odd behavior on both ports instead of one....

[Joetee]

Replace batteries maybe

[MTurney]

Could be moisture...or maybe it needs to be recalibrated?

[grantgallagher]

Both my smoke and signals have been rock solid for more than a year, like yours. Moisture could be the answer i guess.

[Rod]

I haven't seen this. It's a good idea to give the plugs a good wipe before plugging in. Maybe a little debris got pushed into the port. Batteries may possibly need to be changed?

[Michael_in_TX]

My Thermoworks Smoke has been rock solid for over a year now. I love, absolutely love it.

However, yesterday I had the oddest issue with it. I brought the Smoke out to the PBC and hooked up the probe (bottom of the two) to the grate. Temperature was as expected.

When I brought out the pork butt, which was essentially all at 35 degrees, when I put meat probe in (top port), the temperature registered 350 degrees! That seemed slightly inaccurate. I thought the probe had gone bad, so I swapped it out for another probe. Nope, 350 degrees. I unplugged the grate probe and plugged the meat probe into the bottom port.....37 degrees.

So clearly there was an issue with the top port on the Smoke. Here is where it got really odd. When I unplugged the probe from the top port of the smoke, it registered 50 degrees -- with no probe!

No biggie....I can work with this and I did. I would simply unplug the grate probe and temporarily plug in the meat probe to get a current reading.

About halfway through the cook I decided to compare the two ports to see if the problem remained. It didn't....both port probes measured the same temp. The problem did not return during the rest of the cook.

Maybe some moisture got into the top probe port and it took half the cook for it to "dry out?"

Anyone have something odd like this occur?