pid controller

[Northern Q]

we have used the Auber pid controller with our 1400 for a couple of years works great with very little variance in temperature swing
wanted to do some jerky and mention to my wife i would like to get the jerk dryer as we had done some leaving the door open to dry it which is a pain
she got it for me as an early fathers day gift, over the weekend programmed it into the controller

so the controller brought the temp up to 160 for 3 hours then dropped it to 130 for 4 hours with the jerk dryer being turned on at 4 hours
so it ran for 3 total of 7 hours and the pid shuts down everything, worked perfectly have to cut back about an hour on the dry time

[mintzert]

Northern Q, I read your earlier posts on initial set up of Auber Pid. The information and diagrams are very helpfu, thanks for sharing the information. lCouple of follow on questions: While the Auber PID is "plug and play", did you disconnect the SmokinTex thermostat or simply set the temp at 250? I would rather not disconnect it, but some folks have recommended removal of stock thermostat entirely, any thoughts? And secondly, the additional power chord (light blue) in the picture above... is the chord to supply power the fan on top of your smoker while you are making jerky? If so do you leave it on for other purposes as well? Thanks!!

[AndieDini]

Hi...most proportional controllers have some method for varying the output response to the input error; this is the amount of 'gain' applied to the output. The higher the gain, the more the difference a given amount of error will produce. If the gain is too high, the system can become unstable - overshooting and undershooting it's setpoint by a large margin. This appears indicative of a problem with the controller used in the Pit Boss 820D, in my opnion - I'm not aware of any method available to me to change the gain setting on this controller.

pcb assembly