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Archive for April, 2009

Test #3: Need to Cook

April 18th, 2009

Just did test #3 last night.  I was not planning on it, but really wanted to cook potatoes and burgers and did not want to swap back to my 180-LV.  I did not change many settings at all because I did not have time.  Just a simple test turned on and set to 400°.  Towards the end I was opening the lid alot for the burgers…  turning, cheese, you get the idea.  I kept the controller powered after I shutdown to show how much heat the Traeger holds after everything is off.

I was a little disappointed that it could not get up to temp too fast.  It took about 20mins to get to 350, I would like to change that.  Also the graph got a bit messed up, the white numbers are correct, and the same goes for the last graph.  Well…  I’m off to go make some code changes and improvements!

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Test#2: It’s ALIVE!

April 16th, 2009

Good news folks!

I am currently running my second test and it is going great! This time I have completed the PID control over the fan and the logic to control the pellet feed. There is a thermocouple driving the cooker temperature control! I am very happy to report that without any tuning of parameters (read as: it can get better) temps are holding within 5° around 350° and 10° at 200°!  Temperature changes in the setpoint of about 100° take about 10 minutes to settle.

Here is the details of the test…  I started my Traeger using the controller function, from there the controller automatically went into run mode and tried to obtain the default temp of 240°.  It reached that temp in about 10 mins from startup but could be faster due to a parameter I needed to change.  I waited for the PID calculation to settle and keep  the temp within a few degrees which took about 20 mins.  I then adjusted the setpoint up to 350°.  The cooker took about 10 mins to reach 350° and stayed very stable the whole time within 5 degrees.  After a bit I did open the lid for about 15 seconds to see how it was handled.  The temp seemed to fully recover within 3-5 minutes.  I then decreased the setpoint to 180.  I am very concerned about a flameout here, but am re-writing the algorithm to take care of that.  In-deed, I did have a flameout, but because of the snazzy web control, I was able to see the temp go below 150° and still not rise and kick on the hot rod.  Flameout averted!  This will be a automatic function in the future.  There is some issues with dropping temp from a much higher temp…  no pellets are entering the pot for a long time, and the fire goes out.  I am going to work to resolve this.  I began the shutdown routine because it is getting late, and I don’t want ot burn through too many pellets without some Q on the grill!

Here is the graph of the cooker temp.  I will be doing another test this weekend with some more tweaks!


Anyone else find it both weird and awesome that I am sitting inside my house, while my Traeger is outside in my yard while running this test! :-D

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Test #1 A Great Success!!

April 5th, 2009

Hi All,  I am happy to report I have completed the first test on my 075!  It went great! 

Please check the forums for a more detailed update! Forum Post

The next few weeks are going to be busy!

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