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Combustion Thermometers, A Quick Review

Corv
Corv Posts: 560
in EggHead Forum
And so far it’s doing the job. I liked the high number of sensors and the relative slimness of the probe. Compared to my old Smoke, which still works, it has longer range, a more useful display and no damn wires. 
I hated those wires when I was flipping meat or closing the lid. Plus, the Smoke probes, with their wires, could not be used when using the rotisserie, which was one of the uses I’d wanted.
On the Smoke's plus side, I could monitor my oven’s temperature with the Smoke, because its probes go to a higher temperature than the Combustion, with the first four sensors on the Combustion probes being limited to 220 F. The insertion length is clearly marked on each probe, so that limit’s easy to adhere to.
When it arrived, the units needed charging and then updating. These went easily. It doesn’t come with a charger, using the phone’s charger instead. Like some of you probably do, I have several in a drawer, a good thing, because each probe/booster takes on, plus the display taking one.
 The longest cook I used it for went about 7 hours and it was doing strong at the conclusion.
The most annoying downside to me so far has been the lack of a printed manual. But that hasn’t proved crippling, and customer service has been excellent. The second most annoying is the inability to use it to monitor the temperature of my Bluestar’s oven.
There are plenty of other wireless probes out there, most of them cheaper, so if you’re interested, shop around. Besides the slimness and the number of sensors, I looked at the temperatures it could handle and how far in the food it had to be stuck. For most of the things I wanted, the Combustion was the winner, except for price.



Somewhere on the Colorado Front Range
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Comments

  • Ozzie_Isaac
    Ozzie_Isaac Posts: 21,625
    Thank you for the detailed review!  Glad it worked well for you.  I really like Chris Young (combustion Inc owner and brains, and co-author of Modernist Cuisine).  He attacks things from a function/performance/science approach that is excellent.

    I would rather light a candle than curse your darkness.

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  • lousubcap
    lousubcap Posts: 36,660
    The below is the norm, at least for the appliance world I run in. Has been since around 2018 (BC, before covid) and accelerated with Covid- 2020. 
    "The most annoying downside to me so far has been the lack of a printed manual."
    Louisville; Rolling smoke in the neighbourhood.  Life is too short for light/lite beer!  Seems I'm livin in a transitional period. CHEETO (aka Agent Orange) makes Nixon look like a saint.  
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  • newby84
    newby84 Posts: 134
    Would be curious to see if the site crashes during Thanksgiving. 
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  • Corv
    Corv Posts: 560
    With the wifi going, I don't know that the cloud site is actually needed. Maybe it is or maybe the data stream is probe to booster or display to phone.
    Somewhere on the Colorado Front Range
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  • Ozzie_Isaac
    Ozzie_Isaac Posts: 21,625
    edited October 31
    newby84 said:
    Would be curious to see if the site crashes during Thanksgiving. 

      Common occurrence for all BBQ Cloud services! Same as Easter.

    I would rather light a candle than curse your darkness.

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  • zaphod
    zaphod Posts: 1,012
    depends on the architecture. If the thermostat reports to a mothership, and your app reads from the mothership, then you need that up and running to check things.

    That is how my furnace thermostat works. The thermostat talks to the manufacturer server, and my app does the same. When there is an outage (like this past week's AWS outage) then my phone app can't talk to the thermostat even if I am right beside it and we are both on my wifi.
    ~~
    Large BGE, Jonesing for a MiniMax
    The Vegegrilltarian

    The first rule of egg club is: you do NOT talk about egg club.
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  • Ozzie_Isaac
    Ozzie_Isaac Posts: 21,625
    zaphod said:
    depends on the architecture. If the thermostat reports to a mothership, and your app reads from the mothership, then you need that up and running to check things.

    That is how my furnace thermostat works. The thermostat talks to the manufacturer server, and my app does the same. When there is an outage (like this past week's AWS outage) then my phone app can't talk to the thermostat even if I am right beside it and we are both on my wifi.
    I know nothing about implementing networking architecture, but it always is aggravating when stuff can’t communicate directly across a local network and needs to go outside the network then back in.  Seems like implementing a local direct connection would be an easy add to existing software.

    I would rather light a candle than curse your darkness.

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  • zaphod
    zaphod Posts: 1,012
    the problem is that your phone app is just an interface to *look* at data and the probe electronics are just an interface to dump data.  The database and crap in the middle lives on the cloud. It is a classic client server model and while there is nothing wrong with that, the manufacturer should be taking scaling into account. With AWS (or similar) there is always the "it's easy to just spin up more compute as needed" but the companies do this re-actively instead of proactively and on key days (Thanksgiving) the system collapses.  

    Its not like they have a fair idea of how many units are out there registered and expected to be used on key or even turkey days.  Or that this seems to happen every year...

    sigh. 
    ~~
    Large BGE, Jonesing for a MiniMax
    The Vegegrilltarian

    The first rule of egg club is: you do NOT talk about egg club.
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  • cmac610
    cmac610 Posts: 326
    BGE has just released their Combustion Inc System. 




    Craig aka Cmac Cooks
    Amesbury, MA
    #BGETeamGreen #TeamArteflame #TeamBarrelProof #TeamGozney
    XL BGE, Mini-Max, La Caja China, Arteflame Classic 40, Arteflame One 20, Arteflame Euro 20, Cotton Gin Harvester, Weber Classic, Gozney Dome, Anova wifi Sous Vide.
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  • cmac610
    cmac610 Posts: 326
    So @Corv, I finally took my Combustion Inc/BGE kit for a spin and I agree with your review. The nice thing was that unlike my MEATER, which I’ve had a few of over the years, this one didn’t drop out once! Looking fwd to the Grill Gauge accessory part to be released 


    Craig aka Cmac Cooks
    Amesbury, MA
    #BGETeamGreen #TeamArteflame #TeamBarrelProof #TeamGozney
    XL BGE, Mini-Max, La Caja China, Arteflame Classic 40, Arteflame One 20, Arteflame Euro 20, Cotton Gin Harvester, Weber Classic, Gozney Dome, Anova wifi Sous Vide.
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