Testing Home Made Blower Controller in BGE with KBB

[johnec00]

Been fooling around with a home made blower controller off and on for a while. Recently got an adapter for my BGE from EBay, so yesterday decided to try it out with some KBB instead of the normal chunk. I expected a lot of ash, so I removed the fire grate and put 7 pounds KBB in the Kick Ash Charcoal Basket. Lit it near the center with one of the Weber cubes for 15 minutes then added the plate setter, grill, and probes for the controller and a Thermoworks thermometer. Closed the lid. Bottom vent fully closed and top vent barely cracked. Set the controller for 225º. It ran about 21 hours, mostly at 225º with short excursions to 250º and 275º yesterday afternoon. Pictures:

Montage of controller:


KBB in basket:



Plate Setter and probes:



Temperature trace:



The controller is working quite well, still 1-2 degrees higher than the set, but that's easily fixable. It agreed well with the dome thermometer and Thermoworks digital. New nerdy toy!

KBB works, but there was a tremendous amount of ash, at least 3 inches in the bottom of the fire box. I should have taken a picture, but forgot until after the shop vac cleaned it up. It was an interesting experiment, but I'll be sticking with lump.

[Jerod Broussard]

Neat. If it goes +/- 10 degrees it still beats an electric oven by FAR!

[TripleB]

Very cool. I always appreciate those who can tinker and create. I’m also impressed with the tel-tru thermostat. I have one on my PK360 and it’s on the money with the thermoWorks probe. Good job.

[RonB]

Great job!

[Henrik]

Very cool!

[Skip]

Fun experiment! Thanks for posting.

[Spinaker]

Very Cool! I love these experiments! Thanks for sharing this with us.

21 hours is a solid burn time. I have always had trouble getting that done with KBB in my Kamados. I have found that the KBB Ceramic stuff is a little better.

[JCGrill]

So you bought some controls and put them together?

[glitchy]

Did you build totally on your own or did you use some of the HeaterMeater plans and software? I built a HeaterMeter years ago and it was fun to tinker with. I was getting tired of chasing probe noise when the Fireboard came out and moved over to that and threw my homemade in a drawer.

[johnec00]

and JCGrill Both the circuit and software are completely my own. So far, the controller is still on perfbord as I fiddle with getting it to transmit wirelessly to a Visual Studio program on a PC.

[JCGrill]

Super cool. I'm a controls guy, but that's above my pay grade. I use off the shelf controllers when I need to do something. Which of course is cost prohibitive for something like this. Haven't done a bread board since I was in college.

[johnec00]

I did sort of the opposite. Never touched a breadboard in college or almost 40 years as a mechanical engineer. After retirement, I got intrigued with the little micro-controllers . . . about the size of an overgrown finger nail and cost about 2 bucks. Tremendous capability. Anyway, keeps me from drinking too much.

[aladdin4d]

Can you give us any nitty gritty details on the...wait a minute! You're trying to have this communicate wirelessly to a.....to a PC? That's keeping it real! I ended up getting a Tappecue just because it has a public api I could use with PowerShell.

[Black99vette]

Very cool, been on my bucket list for some time (Along with 100 other things).

[SparkDog]

johnec00 I have thought about doing something similar until I get to the programming. What type of algorithm are you using to control the fan? I imagine there is a relay that turns the fan on and off but I don't think it would work like the solid state relay that controls my kettle temperature on my brewing set up. I have a little Party Q for my weber and the fan just seems to turn on and off with no variation in pattern that I can detect when at or near temperature. I would be interested to hear the details on the programming.

[johnec00]

I use a PID (proportional - integral - derivative) algorithm to control the blower. It outputs fan voltage between 12 and 2 volts depending on how far the measured temperature differs from the desired temperature.
Here's a geeky explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller

[johnec00]

When I was in college in the late 60s, the latest and greatest programing language was something called BASIC. When I started fooling with microcontrollers some years ago, I purchased a development system called BASCOM that uses BASIClike language. If I was starting out, I would look into something called ARDUINO which is an open source hardware/software system that is supported by hundreds of user routines. Just searched, they have a tutorial with software that does what my controller does.

[SparkDog]

johnec00 thanks for your reply. I use the arduino to control my kettle for brewing. That uses the PID to turn the heating element on and off. I never thought to vary the fan speed. I just had on/off in my mind like my kettle and the Party Q. I think you have shown me what my next project should be