Bluecat,
A simulated cook is nothing more than a way to monitor the smoker without using meat which can get expensive when you are trying to pin down a problem. Just put a brick or two, I use a pan of sand, into the smoker and set your program the same as a normal cook. You'll need a Maverick to double check what the Auber is doing. I log every test on a log sheet showing the conditions of the test. Mark down date, air temp, wind, what you used for your test. Write down time, Auber temp and Mav temp every 15 minutes. (sometimes shorter) Usually you can get by with only logging the results until it locks in on your target temp. This usually only takes around 60 to 90 minutes. I usually set my Maverick probe within a 1/2" of my fixed probe.
Try it with no meat probe then do another one with the meat probe plugged in to a potato. I even made two small boats out of foil and put sand into them the aprox. weight of the ribs to simulate a small rib cook. You can't gather too much information. What really drives us crazy is the ones that are only happening once in a while.
If you can narrow it down to a specific type of cook like ribs, do the same log sheet on the next few rib cooks until you are confident it is working the way it should or you can document with hard figures what is happening.
Can you give us more information about about what you have noticed? Was it a spike in temp, not settling on target, large over run or under run, excessive time to hit target, etc.
