[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by DiverDude

Ok....as someone who loves to smoke a brisket (or whatever) on the weekend, you've got my curiosity.

Are you making your own smoker or modifying an existing one ?

I've seen systems like this for charcoal smokers -but they controla fan which blows more or less air into the combustion chamber to control heat.

Also, PID my be overkill for something this simple. Usually the way these things go is that you set your chamber temp and then monitor internal meat temp until done. Then you either turn off the heat and/or remove the meat (or fish !) mmmmm....mesquite smoked Regal Tang !

Kiddding !!! Juuuust kindding 'bout the Tang !

building my own, I tried to buy a MES at canuck rubber but they sold out befor I got there and the reg price on the one I want is about 450 so I said screw it i'll build my own. I can get the sheet metal for around 150.00 and that is with them bending up the two boxes for me so all I have to do is weld them up and put isulation between them. be about 20 bucks for an element, 75 bucks for the one PID then some racks and paint. figure I'll be done for about 250 to 300, but instead of getting a 18x16x40 smoker, I'll get one that is 24x24x48 with a lot more function and automation. I was looking at it and I am thinking of making an external chip burner with a 120watt element in it or something like that.. I can hook that to the one alarm output of the PID and the main burner to the 10 amp output so it directly controls the main burner to maintain the heat in the smoker, but I can put a varable in so that if the temp gets over 130 then energize alarm 1 and that will start the smoke generator.

Bandit, you can't realy control the smoker temp through the meat as the idea of smoking is long and low heat.. so you want the smoker to be at 235 degrees for regular smoking, and the meat will slowly cook, in the case of a brisket it could take 12 to 16 hours. if you use a difarential type thing then it will crank the heat to start and slowly lower it which will not give you good BBQ. what I was thinking is a brisket is done when it is 195-205 degrees (varries with different people) so I thought it would be handy to have a hold feature so when the one probe read a meat temp of 205 it would tell the controler to change the smoker temp from 235 to say 175 degrees as a holding temp to prevent over cooking. but that is going to be to much work.. I found one that can do it but I am looking at 600 bucks instead of just over 100 for a couple single input ones.

the only time the cooking process changes is if I want to cold smoke, then I want to run the smoke generator but keep my cabnet temp under 90 degrees, or when making Keilbassa. for this you want to hold at 120 degrees for 2 hours to dry it out, then jump 10 degrees every hour and apply heavy smoke till you hit 180 degrees then hold at that temp till internal temp of the meat is what ever. so I could use the ramp functions to do 120 for two hours then each step would be 10 degrees higher for 1 hour. and again I could set the alarm 1 relay to 125 degrees so it starts the smoke after the first step is complete.

I guess the simplest way is just to get the one PID for 77 bucks as it has a 20amp relay built in and the rise function and just use a wireless theromomitor to monitor the meat as I already have one of thoes..

Steve