A First Look At My Arduino BBQ Thermometer

I’ve uploaded a first look at the Arduino powered BBQ thermometer and software that I’m building. It’s using an Arduino Uno with Ethernet shield.

The probe is a 100K “meat probe” (aka “thermistor”) that I took from a store bought meat thermometer. Something like this replacement probe would work great. It’s a bit of a guessing game as to wether the probe is a 10k or 100k Ohm probe. I tried 10, 100, 1k, 10k and finally 100k resistors in my thermistor setup. You can read about thermistor setup on the Arduino playground, and at Hacktronics.

The Arduino code produces a JSON document when I make an HTTP request to it. The software is built with Kendo UI Mobile, and reads the JSON document on a 1 second interval.

I’ll be blogging about this more, and hopefully soon, with plans on going through a step by step “how I learned” series – at least, that’s the plan. For now, this little teaser video should give you a good idea of what can be done with an Arduino, some simple parts from a store, and a mobile app framework like Kendo UI Mobile. 🙂

… I need to learn how to optimize my C code for battery life. I’ve run that 9volt battery maybe 10 or 20 minutes, total, and it’s already dead. 😛