Turkey + USB Thermometer + Cloudkick = SMS Delicious | Hacker News Reader

Turkey + USB Thermometer + Cloudkick = SMS Delicious

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89 pointscloudkick20 comments

Is there a cooking probe thermometer that supports USB? This Go!Temp probe only claims 130C/266F as it's max operating range, and isn't clear if that temp also applies to the electronics housing package just behind the probe.

I'd be great to have something that is wrapped in silicone, safe for oven use up to around 550F that has a detachable daughter board that connects to USB.

It's the probe rating. It'll be interesting to see how long the USB electronics survive if they get up to that temperature. Industrial temperature range is typically only up to 70C and I don't think I've ever seen even Automotive/Military IC's that can operate at 130C

What you're looking for is pretty easy to build at lower temperatures: just put a temperature probe in a stainless steel housing and route the sensor leads out to USB data collection that's at a safe temperature. The off the shelf units tend to be expensive because they're aimed at food-grade applications, not at hobbyists.

At temperatures of 550F, then you need to use thermocouples which are a bit harder to interface to, so hobbyists tend to shy away. Again, plenty of commercial products at this range, but expensive.

I do already have an oxo probe ( http://www.oxo.com/p-558-digital-leave-in-meat-thermometer.a... ) that works well, will have to see if the wife would be willing to let me hack it up a bit.

What is it rated to? I am looking for one that will work for the oven and not just the meat.

If you feel creative, you could try to build your own temperature probe using Arduino + LM35 sensor + stainless steel tube + some solder.

The datata sheet claims, it can read temperature between -55°C - 150°C, but I never tested its limit so I have now idea how far you can actually push it :)

In any case, like HeyLaughingBoy have said, if you want something which goes higher, check thermocouples.

The probe is good up to 425F

Yes, we were afraid that we would push the thing over its limits... thus smoking the turkey at 200-250F. For a little while (and you'll see it in the graph in the post) the thermometer registered 32F because we pushed it too far. Once we got the temp below 300F, it seemed to work just fine.

Cool from the hacker perspective - but I can't help thinking it could equally have ended up a "How I caused an electrical/grease/plastic fire in my back yard, causing a toxic lithium-ion battery explosion, and definitely ruined the bird."

Sure, all possible, but actually the Backwoods smoker we use is very nice -- its insulated, it can be 300 degrees on the inside, and cool to the touch on the top of it -- you can see in the photo that we sat a plastic tub on top of it, without any worries.

These guys in Portland, Oregon have similar fun every year. If I recall correctly, the site used to be more descriptive but maybe it becomes more robust on the holiday.

http://turkeytracker.com/#&panel1-1

Edit Haa!!! This is what I was looking for, here is a wealth of information regarding live-streaming your bird's journey- http://www.turkeytracker.com/blog/

That's funny. I'm sitting here writing code to do the same thing (well temperature monitoring anyway, just not for turkeys) but using my own wireless temperature hardware.

I can't be the only one who clicked trying to work out how a USB thermometer could be used in making a USB based distributed bookmarking service (i.e. Delicious). Facepalm for me!

Using a whole laptop seems insane.

I would pay for someone to build an xbee-based wireless temperature network, though. Any hardware hackers around?

Does it have to be xbee? I have a Bluetooth prototype working.

Is that using a Bluetooth shield on an arduino? What's the range?

Nothing to do with Arduino: it's all custom hardware. Range is 100 meters; Bluetooth Class 1. You can contact me through my profile email.

It is "turkey" not "Turkey" - the country. This headline seems to capitalize all the words and this changes the meaning.

Turkey when starting a sentence or in a title is still capitalized. English is often a context based language. This is one of those times. The meaning is evident if you read the rest of the title.

Yes it is. But this is not sentence, it is equation. And every word in equation is capitalized. At least words can be reordered.

I'm pretty sure that if you get a data logger like this (http://www.microdaq.com/lascar/temperature/usb-thermocouple-...) and combine it with a good thermocouple probe and you should be good to go.

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