Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Alton Brown's PID-controlled Flower Pot Smoker

I saw Alton Brown's segment on Brined Pulled Pork, and thought "That sure looks good, but I bet it'd be better if the temperature could be controlled to within .1 degrees C. I'm going to do that! Here are the source videos that go the ball rolling:




I then modified the plans I found over here: I thought it was silly to have all the electronics hanging above the water, and given the issues the author mentioned with heaters burning out, it made sense to have it be a separate box, with plugs to plug in whatever heating elements one might want.







One issue I had with the smoker was that the heating element's thermostat would actually cycle the thing on and off even when set on high, making the PID controller useless. So I took the heating plate apart, removed the thermostat, and that fixed things just fine.




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