Hey, All
I've been playing with my #2D for a few months now, and I've noticed a pattern - when cooking with a target temp programmed into the PID controller, both the cabinet and (especially) the food temps tend to "stall out" short of their goals. I've auto-tuned the cabinet, but it's still doing the same thing. The only way I've found to get around this issue, is to program in multiple steps with ever-increasing cabinet temps, so the heating element never turns off for too long.
I ran an experiment with some trout fillets, here are the PID settings (following my recent auto-tune), and the temp data that I got:
P 118
I 938
D 234
T 2
Program: temp set to 180*F until food is at 145*F (then step 2 was just a "keep warm" at 120*F for 3 hours)
Time Cabinet Food Probe3 %power Comment
0 70 65 63 100
15 113 77 80 100
20 157 100 105 14
25 171 116 121 14 OK I can see why the power adjustment is happening here, it's chugging along
30 174 129 133 13
35 174 134 137 14 But what's going on here? Cabinet's not at target, and food stalls out from here
40 172 137 139 17
45 170 137 138 22
50 169 136 138 24 Here the cabinet actually dips, so the power increases, but not enough
55 169 135 137 26
60 170 135 136 30
65 171 135 137 30
70 173 135 137 30
75 176 136 138 29 At this point I gave up and set the temp to 200*F, to get the food to 145*F finally
From my uneducated perspective, it seems like it's over-correcting for the rising food temp, and neither the smoker itself gets to the set temp of 180*F, nor the food actually goes anywhere once it's reached 135*F (10 degrees shy of target). My second time using this cabinet, with some chicken breasts, I had just let it do its thing, and they got to within 20*F of target temp within maybe 40 minutes, then just sat there, for like 4 hours. By the time they finally squeaked past target temp, they were dry as could be.
Any suggestions for changes to the PID programming? Or am I doing something else wrong?
Thanks in advance!
I've been playing with my #2D for a few months now, and I've noticed a pattern - when cooking with a target temp programmed into the PID controller, both the cabinet and (especially) the food temps tend to "stall out" short of their goals. I've auto-tuned the cabinet, but it's still doing the same thing. The only way I've found to get around this issue, is to program in multiple steps with ever-increasing cabinet temps, so the heating element never turns off for too long.
I ran an experiment with some trout fillets, here are the PID settings (following my recent auto-tune), and the temp data that I got:
P 118
I 938
D 234
T 2
Program: temp set to 180*F until food is at 145*F (then step 2 was just a "keep warm" at 120*F for 3 hours)
Time Cabinet Food Probe3 %power Comment
0 70 65 63 100
15 113 77 80 100
20 157 100 105 14
25 171 116 121 14 OK I can see why the power adjustment is happening here, it's chugging along
30 174 129 133 13
35 174 134 137 14 But what's going on here? Cabinet's not at target, and food stalls out from here
40 172 137 139 17
45 170 137 138 22
50 169 136 138 24 Here the cabinet actually dips, so the power increases, but not enough
55 169 135 137 26
60 170 135 136 30
65 171 135 137 30
70 173 135 137 30
75 176 136 138 29 At this point I gave up and set the temp to 200*F, to get the food to 145*F finally
From my uneducated perspective, it seems like it's over-correcting for the rising food temp, and neither the smoker itself gets to the set temp of 180*F, nor the food actually goes anywhere once it's reached 135*F (10 degrees shy of target). My second time using this cabinet, with some chicken breasts, I had just let it do its thing, and they got to within 20*F of target temp within maybe 40 minutes, then just sat there, for like 4 hours. By the time they finally squeaked past target temp, they were dry as could be.
Any suggestions for changes to the PID programming? Or am I doing something else wrong?
Thanks in advance!
