Hooray! My programmed PID worked!

[Patience]

I did my first programmed smoke today on some jerky.  Since it was jerky, EVERYTHING was automatic.
All I did was look over my smokers shoulder to make sure everything functioned OK.

With the ramp/soak and program, I started at 120 deg. for 30minutes, then upto 140 over 60 minutes, all drying time.  The alarm relay wired through the hot puck advance motor wire turned on as soon as it hit 140 degrees and the motor cycled a puck onto the hot plate (I hit the button twice to load 2 pucks before running the program).  After 2 hours of smoke, and the PID increasing the temp to 160 over the same 2 hours, the puck advance motor was shut off with a bubba puck left on the hot plate.  The temp was then held at 160 degrees until I shut the whole works down after the jerky looked done.  I never touched the original slider control or adjusted the PID in anyway.   Since I put the thicker jerky on the bottom, I didn't even have to rotate the racks.  I say it was all automatic because I don't have to change the water with the low jerky cook times, I'm working on an automatic water filler.   :)

My high tech damper closer was a baby food jar filled with a few nuts and bolts (food grade of course).  I tied a string to it and set it down into the puck tower ontop of the last puck.  I tied the other end on the handle of the damper with no slack.  As soon as the first puck was advanced, the jar dropped 1 puck thickness and was enough to close the damper to half way, the next advance closed it against my probe wires going into the smoker thru the vent.  The baby food jar was dangling and the vent was a little more than half way closed, right where I usually have it.  Sorry Arc-N-sparks, I am clueless about the stepper motor and driver so I had to use something at my disposal. 

Anyhow, the project worked and thanks to this site and all the posts from the "know how" people I was able to get up the courage to give it a go.

Thanks again!
Patience

[Arcs_n_Sparks]

Patience,

Outstanding story. The baby food jar sounds pretty clever (although it may invoke Rube Goldberg comparisons), and I suspect gravity always works where you are.

I'm still waiting to repair my driver board......   :(

Arcs_n_Sparks

[iceman]

Now that's using some imagination!!! :D ;D ;) Way cool Patience!!!