Bought some accessories - iGrill 2, ambient temp probe and pecan chunks

[Lightning]

I think we all know that lid thermometers are dicey at best.  The latest instance of that was when I walked by the WSM the other night well after dark when it was cool out and the temp gauge needle wasn't on the floor for some unknown reason even though it wasn't in use and stone cold.  I'd been looking into multichannel wireless thermometers and decided to get an iGrill 2 and an ambient temperature probe to go with it.

I'm going to give the iGrill 2 and the ambient temperature probe a trial run tonight with a couple of racks of back ribs in the WSM.  The meat probes will have to wait for a more substantial cut of meat than ribs.  It's going to be interesting trying out a consumer oriented piece of gear like this instead of industrial instrumentation; I'll probably end up gnashing my teeth about not being able to interface it with a computer and script things etc...

I also bought a package of pecan wood chunks.  I've never used wood chunks before, just the chips, so I'll be trying that out tonight too.  It's going to be a late night, but it's the longest day of the year and I'm on vacation so why not...

[Lightning]

The iGrill 2 and ambient temperature probe worked really well.  The only significant downsides I ran into were Bluetooth limitations.  Range falls off rapidly.  I went into this knowing from having read reviews but I was still surprised by some of the locations that my phone reported communication loss.

The other limitation that doesn't really seem to be discussed is that Bluetooth pairing is literally that which means the iGrill base station can only send to one device at a time and has to be disconnected and re-paired as necessary; it'd be nice to have the app on both my tablet and smartphone with data being streamed to both at the same time  and bounce between using whichever device is most convenient at any given time.  To be fair, these are inherent limitations to Bluetooth and all BT wireless thermometers are going to be affected.

Previously I was using a combination of the lid thermometer and a $9 instant read thermometer that can handle the ambient temperatures of the WSM poked in through the thermometer grommet on the side of the WSM.  The issues with the lid thermometers on the grills and smokers are well known.  The instant read poking in the side of the WSM was better but since the grommet's between the two grates, was still off, so it still wasn't a proper replacement for true at grate temperature monitoring.

The social media aspect of the app is very disconcerting with the way you can see the profile pictures of people who are sharing their cooks and presumably see what they look like and zoom in on their houses from the satellite view and see where they're cooking and probably where they live.  I'm surprised people put themselves and their homes out there like that with such geographic accuracy.