Intelligrill®, Powered by Feather.

myminifactory

Intelligrill, Powered by Feather is a wifi enabled remote grill, smoker and oven thermometer that provides real-time updates of when the main course will be ready to serve. By constantly monitoring the change in food temperature over time, Intelligrill gives you a very reasonable estimate of the time remaining until your main course is ready to be moved from the grill, smoker or oven to your table. You simply specify the temperature you desire, and Intelligrill keeps you constantly informed of the cooking progress and time remaining via the Intelligrill OLED display and via a wifi connected web browser of your choice. I designed the first Intelligrill in 2012 using a PIC24FJ64GB002 processor, a Roving Networks wifi module, an Adafruit 128 by 64 oled module, and around 20 additional components. It was designed for my wife, who would immediately ask "when will it be ready?" as soon as the main course was placed in the grill, smoker or oven. Intelligrill kept her updated via an iOS application I wrote, constantly displaying the time remaining until, and the time of day that, the main course would be table ready. We've used Intelligrill hundreds of times since its birth with great results. But unfortunately, after years of problem-free iOS upgrades on our iPhone and iPad devices, the App Store announced that the newest release of iOS would break my iOS Intelligrill application, so they removed it from the App Store. Decision time: update the Intelligrill iOS app, or find an alternative. While searching for an alternative to iOS, I came across a remarkable little board, the Adafruit Feather Huzza ESP8266. This board had everything I required for a new Intelligrill; a decent processor, a lithium ion battery port with charger, wifi, analog input, plus the ability to easily attach an oled display. I ordered the Feather Huzza ESP8266 and an oled board, gathered some parts, ported the original Intelligrill iOS software into the Arduino IDE, wrote additional software to welcome the Intelligrill to its new home, took a crash course in HTML/JavaScript/JSON programming, then wrote the client-side software. I designed and 3D printed a case, and finally after a very long week "Intelligrill, Powered by Feather" was born. Intelligrill is programmed in C/C++, HTML, JavaScript, and JSON, which means it will communicate remotely with most any wifi-enabled device having a web browser (e.g. no more App Store, no more iOS update-induced failures). Intelligrill can be used as a simple wired digital thermometer, as a wireless digital thermometer (when using the Intelligrill access point), and as a long-distance wireless digital thermometer (when used with a wifi router). You will need soldering skills and soldering equipment, wire, and all parts listed in the first step, plus an Arduino IDE with appropriate Adafruit libraries installed, to assemble and program Intelligrill. Please note that Intelligrill is copyrighted and is a registered trademark of Zumwalt Properties, LLC. However, I've included all Intelligrill source code and the Autodesk Fusion 360 design file in the upload, so feel free to modify Intelligrill for your own personal, non-commercial use. And please publish your results as I would truly enjoy seeing a much better Intelligrill presentation than mine! Having little to no HTML/JavaScript/JSON experience, I depended heavily on the tutorials from w3schools.com (a great resource), the ESP8266 data sheets, and the wonderful tutorials, data, and examples at Adafruit.com. If you have questions or comments about Intelligrill, please feel free to comment or message and I will do my best to answer them. And as usual, I probably forgot a file or two or who knows what else, so if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask as I do make mistakes in plenty. The electronic circuitry was designed using pencil, paper, and a calculator (who knew that still worked?). The software was designed using Arduino IDE version 1.8.5. Note that this is my first experience with HTML, JavaScript, and JSON programming, so please be gentle in the comments. And finally, the case was designed using Autodesk Fusion 360, sliced using Cura 2.7.0, and printed in PLA on an Ultimaker 3 Extended.