jdbower

Re: outdoor kitchen I'm in the two KK camp (one 23" and one 19.5" - but if I were to do it over again I'd do two 23"). I'm occasionally tempted by a Weber Performer or similar grill for quick burgers or brats, but the 19.5" isn't that much longer to get to temperature and is much more versatile (I use the big one for low and slow using extruded coco charcoal and mini-me for high temp with lump). I do, however, still use propane. I have a 65kBTU burner I use for a large outdoor wok and having a few more side burners for other stuff like simmering sauces would be useful. A gas grill, or even a Performer, would probably not be as valuable to me as extra counter and storage space or the holy grail of outdoor kitchens - the sink!

Re: Is the Benzomatic JT850 the best? Think of it like the compressed air cans. When you turn them upside down the liquid comes out and instantly turns to gas creating a freeze spray (when a liquid turns into a gas it's endothermic - absorbing energy [heat] from the surroundings). If you did the same thing with flaming liquid propane you'd end up with a lot more propane gas than you wanted, and probably two fewer eyebrows When you turn the cannister upside down it's a one-way valve trying to prevent anything from escaping, but you can force the liquid propane into the bottle from the other direction. That way when you stop forcing the new propane into the bottle the valve kicks in and prevents it all from escaping.

Re: Alice is HERE!!!! Alice, eh? Hopefully you don't light with propane and have the flame go out. Otherwise when you relight it will be "Bang, zoom, straight to the Moon!" At least you'll soon be saying, "Baby, you're the greatest!"

Re: Just figured I would ask... The CDC is ready: http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp And what makes you think the KK's will be left behind? Mine is ascending with the righteous!

Re: Build Your Own BBQ Controller (w/Wifi) The interface is initially USB, then Bluetooth. But I can't see why it wouldn't be able to be extended to WiFi or even 3G/4G. Seems like there should be a method of pushing data to the phone/tablet and writing data to the controller. Of course, the real purpose is to have an open standard so you can build neat things like controlling your phone's music player via your car. Open standards are nice that way

Re: Build Your Own BBQ Controller (w/Wifi) Just a slight tangent, looks like it may soon be trivial to interface an Arduino-based device with an Android device: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/0 ... od-tm.html

Re: Tiny Stoker wireless gateway No dropped connections, but there seems to be a race condition if you power the Stoker on at the same time. My guess is that the Stoker sometimes boots before the link is established and it doesn't get an IP address. Once it's working it doesn't seem to break the connection, but obviously hardwired to a switch is going to be a better solution if it's possible.

Re: Tiny Stoker wireless gateway Yes, I use a NetGear model (perhaps a bit older) and it works fine. I have it running the entire length of the house, plugged into a power strip, through an extension cable to the Garage, down the entire length of the house (and through the circuit breaker in the middle) to my router. Works great and pretty reliable, but I try to power it on first and then power on the Stoker a bit after.

Re: Stoker Enclosure Nice! I put a small dish towel at the bottom of mine to absorb stray moisture. It doesn't work when it's really humid (I've had an incident where condensing humidity killed my Stoker - luckily the KK maintained temp and I woke up just about when the brisket reached 195). It looks like there's a nice lip in front of the probe holes, if that's enough to force the probe wires down a bit it could work as a decent drip loop.

Re: Three Extruder Machines are in the House! Don't forget the "white fuzz of quality" found in some other brands

Re: BBQ BROWNIES Try a cheesecake - with the coconut charcoal it leaves just a hint of sweet smoke that had everyone guessing what spice I had added.

Re: Annoying Feature I believe the feature is there to warn you that someone replied to the thread while you were typing out your own reply, it gives you a chance to read the thread at the bottom of the edit page to see if someone's already posted your response. On some really active forums I see a lot of nearly identical posts within minutes or seconds of each other - this feature can prevent that.

Re: Build Your Own BBQ Controller (w/Wifi)

Re: Build Your Own BBQ Controller (w/Wifi) I'm thinking dirt cheap. My thought on the waterproofing is that you could take the connector I had linked and cut it in half. The bare wires on one end would be connected to the board (soldered directly or via a header). They'd pass through a hole in the enclosure that you could patch up with silicone or a gasket (or both). The other end of the connection would have the bare wires soldered to a small board with the ID chip which would, in turn, be connected either to the probe directly or (my preference) to a 1/4" female connector. The 1/4" female to automotive connector pigtail should be able to be waterproofed either with an off-the-shelf enclosure or some Plasti-Dip/silicone. Once you plug in the 1/4" jack you can make it waterproof using some stretch tape. Of course, getting new cheap probes and soldering directly from auto pigtail to ID chip to probe with a bump in the middle for the coupling would be cleaner, but since I've got Stoker probes I may need to salvage them in the future. Obviously if we use the Stoker components it may obviate the need for the ID chip.

Re: Build Your Own BBQ Controller (w/Wifi) My hope is that a smaller board will be easier to put into a weatherproof case and would survive more temperature extremes than a full motherboard. I've been mulling over the connector options, I wonder if we should consider something like automotive weatherproof pigtails instead of 1/4" jacks? Especially if we're going to need identifier chip adapters for existing probes/fans this would let us tape up the 1/4" to weather-proof connector as we see fit. And we'd be able to have a much higher density of them to boot since we wouldn't need surface mount receptacles.

Re: Build Your Own BBQ Controller (w/Wifi) Playing around a bit with the IDE I do see a webserver example which is promising. Being security conscious I'd much rather have a secure protocol like SSH or HTTPS which I don't think it can handle, but there are options I'm considering - especially if we go the stoker_mon route where I don't mind a mostly insecure connection from PC to controller because I can add security on the webserver. If I ever get any spare time I'll try to slap together a document or two. Regarding WiFi, my only real request is WPA2 support. So far it seems like most routers support B, there is a risk that it could be dropped in the future but until then I can't see any issues with network speed. And hopefully there will be a drop-in replacement module (perhaps even cheaper than today's B module).

Re: Uneven Burn of Coals As another note, if you use a power draft controller (Stoker/Guru) you'll probably notice an uneven burn since you're using forced air instead of having a normally aspirated cooker. Personally I've never had any ill effects because of this, but for high temp stuff you get a nice roaring fire all over and for low temp stuff I usually go indirect where it doesn't matter.

Re: Build Your Own BBQ Controller (w/Wifi) I'm actually wondering if a Gumstix-like solution would be a decent choice. Reading a bit about the Arduino it seems a little limited from a management interface perspective - I'll know more once I play with it a bit. What if we had an Arduino as a dumb microcontroller paired with a Gumstix system-on-a-chip providing the Ethernet connectivity and management interface? It does bring the cost up a lot (without volume, I think a WiFi-enabled Gumstix is $200 - there may be cheaper competitors), but it's my impression that the Arduino Uno probably would need custom software to access it which would mean trying to develop cross-platform code (Qt, perhaps? Problem is the future of Qt is in the air with Nokia's troubles...). With a GumStix we could have a web-server and SSH/Telnet server built-in. http://www.gumstix.com/

Re: Build Your Own BBQ Controller (w/Wifi) OK, I give up. I've ordered an Arduino starter kit to play with. I want to see what the software looks like and if I can get an HTTP (HTTPS?) and SSH server running on it. One of my contacts may be able to build us a custom board once we've cobbled together some prototypes. Most of his experience is in FPGA design and his focus is on high bit-rate telecom systems rather than price so it's not a slam dunk. But if we end up with something the size of a dorm fridge I wouldn't worry too much, we'll fix it in the respin

Re: Build Your Own BBQ Controller (w/Wifi) I do have contacts in the manufacturing realm, I'd be happy to tap those for a quote once we get a design down. Depending on how many people are interested we can also look into an injection-molded case, but I'm guessing it would be a lot more cost effective to attack a generic box with a Dremel.

Re: Build Your Own BBQ Controller (w/Wifi) The idea of a crowd-sourced temperature controller is kind of neat. Especially since I now think I need to rewrite stoker_mon, anyway. The Stoker seems a little underpowered for my technique of using a JSON polling method - it was fine with a fan and three probes, but with two blowers and four probes the Stoker is fairly unresponsive. I'll probably need to work on a telnet-based interface instead of polling the webserver, in the mean time maybe just adding some (adaptive?) delay between polls will help... One thing I like about the Stoker is that they have arbitrary configurations. This necessitates some sort of identifier in the plug, though, so that would kill the idea of reusing Guru probes. I suppose there's no problem with putting the identifier into the female side of the plug (essentially making the blower/probes position dependent), but it would be nice to be able to auto-detect if it's a blower or a temperature sensor. An alternative solution is to have standalone adapters that add a small identification mechanism. That also opens us up to allowing other temperature probes more easily, something like a Maverick probe adapter for example. We can also use a different connector type if we want a higher density of ports. With a little forethought we may be able to handle un-identified probes as well using a manual assignment. Sadly, I'm much better at coming up with requirements than actual implementation Still, if you want the structure of a formal design doc I'd be happy to lend a hand.

Re: Source for Lump Charcoal - Maui The joys of living on an island! I'm afraid I can't help much, but occasionally you'll see a high-end brand mentioned that may be willing to ship you a pallet - be obviously you're used to paying extortion-quality shipping fees. For something like charcoal you may want to find a local BBQ group or even a restaurant or two and do a massive order otherwise you'll be dominated by shipping fees. Personally I use Cowboy for my lump since it seems a good deal for the price/convenience and I only use lump for high temp stuff. For low and slow where the charcoal flavor can be much more of a driving factor I use Dennis' extruded coconut. He's got the machines to make it himself now so hopefully we'll soon start seeing it flow. If you want to move away from Cowboy, can't find enough people to make "importing" a viable option, and can't wait for the extruded, you can always try to make it yourself. If you've got a decent source of untreated hardwood it's not too difficult to get the technique down to turn it into charcoal. There are some books and other instructional resources available but I haven't looked into it too carefully myself.

Re: Questions about the 19.5 inch Komodo Kamado Something I recently was reminded of it that, ironically, over uneven surfaces I find the 23" to be a bit easier to handle than the 19.5" thanks to the bigger wheels. This is a good thing in many cases, I'd imagine that the 23" is more at home on an uneven patio while the 19.5" would be likely to live on a smooth concrete balcony - meaning in their native environment both are equally as easy to push.

Re: Questions about the 19.5 inch Komodo Kamado Do you know where you're moving in Europe? The US is full of suburbs which handle BBQ very well, but much of Europe tends to be much more boolean where you either live in the city or you're in the middle of a rural area. If you're not sure you'll have a yard the 19.5" does do well on a balcony - assuming it's allowed. Having both a 19.5" and a 23" I can say that the moving of either is about the same. Either needs multiple people and careful packing, about the only time saver with moving the 19.5" is that you may want to remove the dome on the 23" during the move to make it a little more manageable - but I wouldn't base your decision on this. My preference is for the 23", I just find it to be a bit more pleasing aesthetically (the 19.5" is a bit tall and narrow which is ergonomically correct in that it keeps the grilling surface at the right height) and having the extra space when I need it is a much better thing than running out of room. Dennis will probably chime in with his very apt furniture analogy as well, the 23" is only slightly larger than the 19.5" but it feels a lot bigger.

Re: My KK needs a sidekick!! How about another KK? I have a high powered burner for my wok, the grate also flips over for flat-bottomed pots (think steaming seafood without stinking up the kitchen) but I don't know about searing. For that I've got a 19.5" KK, but the Weber mentioned above may also be useful. I've been tempted to add a Weber Performer myself for quick stuff like burgers and dogs but the time savings over the baby KK probably isn't worth the outside space.