The Stoker wait begins

Blassiter

Pulled the trigger Thursday and ordered the Stoker with an additional food probe after reading all the reviews on this site. Happy to join the cool club. Now I wait. 

HostileHarry

I'm in exact same boat. Ordered on Thursday as well. I'll let you know if I hear anything 

lkapigian

Ordered mine on the 12th Arrival date is this coming Monday...already downloaded Pit Pal on my Android and IPad 

Blassiter

Was thinking about building the watertight box this weekend but not sure what size I should buy. Any suggestions? 

Fireman_Joe

I have mine in a Pelican Case #1400, the interior dimensions are 11.8" L x 8.8" W x 5.2" H. The Stoker itself is 5.5" W x 5.5"L x 2"H, with probes in front and back you need 7.5" L.

stompbox

I just placed an order just now. Now I need to do some homework on this wifi stuff.  No idea how to "port forward" or create a "static IP" or any of that. I feel a headache coming on.

Blassiter

@stompbox, docs on Rocks website are excellent.

Blassiter

Thanks Fireman_Joe!

stompbox

Blassiter said:

@stompbox, docs on Rocks website are excellent.

I just DL'd them and took a look.

I also took at the review in the Naked Wiz and it looks like my screen is similar to that one so I will probably try to use both at the same time.  They have lots of screen caps that show exactly where to do things. Looks very helpful.

HostileHarry

Fireman_Joe said:

I have mine in a Pelican Case #1400, the interior dimensions are 11.8" L x 8.8" W x 5.2" H. The Stoker itself is 5.5" W x 5.5"L x 2"H, with probes in front and back you need 7.5" L.

Thanks for this Joe! I too was going to figure out how to keep the Chicago rain off this thing. I might just go this path as well.

HostileHarry

@Fireman_Joe How do you feed the cables out of the Pelican? Is there a cable port out the front of the case near the handle?

Fireman_Joe

On the front of the case is a removal name plate piece, I have a couple of holes drilled out behind it to run the cables out, when not using cables are in box and I slide the name plate back in.

FYI: You can get away with a smaller box but I store the stoker which is mounted on the U shape bracket that I got from Rocks BBQ, 2-Grid Probes, 3-Food Probes, 2-Fans, power unit, and my thermapen. I also taped a heating chart from Amazing Ribs in the lid of the box just in case I forgot what temperatures I need to cook things at. Old age getting to me ! LOL

HostileHarry

stompbox said:

I just placed an order just now. Now I need to do some homework on this wifi stuff.  No idea how to "port forward" or create a "static IP" or any of that. I feel a headache coming on.

I'm reading through the Doc for setup and I'm laughing. They did a job explaining DHCP/Static routing, etc. I would love to see them explain setting up IPV6 and separating the Voice & Data VLAN and applying QoS across the LAN back to the MPLS Cloud PE (For any networking geeks out there).

Fireman_Joe

I will take a couple of pictures of the box when I get home in a couple of hours.

HostileHarry

Fireman_Joe said:

I will take a couple of pictures of the box when I get home in a couple of hours.

Awesome. I see your in FL and I was wondering how much heat does the Stoker generate? Any concerns with running the Stoker with the Pelican closed down?

Fireman_Joe

Never had a heat issue with it so far, never really thought about this HostileHarry. Next long cook I will keep one of the food probes in the box and see what it records. I never snap the lid shut on the case and never had any water get inside case from the five holes on the front or the lid not snapped shut.

20stone

Welcome to the dark side.

I was making a brisket last night with my brother-in-law and my young nephew.  He was watching me add the lump, get it started, add the oak chunks, etc.

I got to a point, though, where I told him, "Everything you have seen up to this point is how any self respecting Texan would go about smoking a brisket.  But, what I'm about to do is the lowest, dirtiest, cheatin'est thing in the world." and I proceeded to hook up my Stoker.

I bought mine about 8 years ago the second time my fire went out doing an overnight pork butt when it was <20 deg outside.  While better cooks than me can manage it, relighting a fire in the middle of the night when it is snowing on you isn't a bucket of laughs.

I haven't switched over to WiFi, however.  A man has to draw the line somewhere.

Enjoy!

Fireman_Joe

Fireman_Joe

Fireman_Joe

HostileHarry

Ahh so you cut out a few of those holes and removed all the foam. nice setup.

Fireman_Joe

I ordered 2 cases without the foam, saved a couple of bucks. Missing in the picture is one additional fan and 3 probes as they are in use by my son.

Blassiter

@fireman_joe, how is the wifi reception with box closed?

Fireman_Joe

No problem with it closed

Blassiter

Really like that box. May have to attempt something similar. Thanks!

Blassiter

@hostileharry or @stompbox, you hear anything yet about your Stoker shipping?

stompbox

No. But, I just ordered on Saturday so I did not expect to hear anything yet.  Particularly when they are still running the sale.

lkapigian

stompbox said:

No. But, I just ordered on Saturday so I did not expect to hear anything yet.  Particularly when they are still running the sale.

I think they are getting caught up, mine came a couple days before schedule 

4Runner

@stompbox    What worked for me is a DHCP reservation by MAC address.   I simply went to my router config and reserved an ip for my stoker based its MAC address.   When my router sees my stoker's MAC address, it automatically assigns the reserved ip.  When to stoker is offline, my router doesn't assign the IP address and keeps it in reserve.  The stoker doesn't know different as dhcp is handing out the ip as usual....it just gives the stoker the same one each time.  Therefore I didn't need any extra config on the Stoker side.  As for port forwarding, again, in the router config you simply tell it to route this type of traffic to this specific ip.  Varies a bit by router but the concept is the same.  Lastly, you can then use a DNS service and create an alias to get to your stoker.  "Joe BGE at my domain.com" as an example.  This is handy as over time your ISP will change your modem's IP address.  So, unless you always know what this is, you may not be able to connect to your stoker.  The DNS resolves your name to the modem's ip and through a little service running on your Mac/PC, keeps your ip in sync.   Sounds like a lot but it really isn't too bad.  Hope this helps. 

lkapigian

4Runner said:

@stompbox    What worked for me is a DHCP reservation by MAC address.   I simply went to my router config and reserved an ip for my stoker based its MAC address.   When my router sees my stoker's MAC address, it automatically assigns the reserved ip.  When to stoker is offline, my router doesn't assign the IP address and keeps it in reserve.  The stoker doesn't know different as dhcp is handing out the ip as usual....it just gives the stoker the same one each time.  Therefore I didn't need any extra config on the Stoker side.  As for port forwarding, again, in the router config you simply tell it to route this type of traffic to this specific ip.  Varies a bit by router but the concept is the same.  Lastly, you can then use a DNS service and create an alias to get to your stoker.  "Joe BGE at my domain.com" as an example.  This is handy as over time your ISP will change your modem's IP address.  So, unless you always know what this is, you may not be able to connect to your stoker.  The DNS resolves your name to the modem's ip and through a little service running on your Mac/PC, keeps your ip in sync.   Sounds like a lot but it really isn't too bad.  Hope this helps. 

You lost me at DHCP

HostileHarry

Blassiter said:

@hostileharry or @stompbox, you hear anything yet about your Stoker shipping?

Order remains 'in process' status.