Some awesome testing and discussions going on at that thread, thank you for posting the location. Unfortunately I am not as easy to follow or as organized with my results but hope they are useful and understandable.
I did further testing today and if not for the meat temp probe I am pretty happy. I even ran the
AMNPS on the bottom left and burned a full row during my testing. One thing I was doing during earlier testing of the
AMNPS on the bottom was throwing chips in the loader and this might have robed the
AMNPS of air flow, no idea. Plus I did not follow the lighting instructions closely before.
No wood chips today, water bowl in place and loader in place I did open the door every hour or 2 to relocate probes. Great smoke and no problems with
AMNPS going out.
Turned on MES set to 275 and burner cycled off at 273 took about 20 minutes. Temp ran up to 289 and fell back to 271 burner cycled back on. At top end stand alone oven probe thermo read, rack 3 280 rack 4 (bottom rack) 305.
Next cycle of burner at 271 and eventually dropped to 267, rack 3 270 rack 4 280.
Ran it this way for about 3 hours and everything was fairly stable. rack 3 279 rack 4 299 another test on another cycle MES read 281 probes rack 3 275 rack 4 300.
Set temp at 230 rack 1 240 rack 2 230
Set temp at 225 rack 1 220 rack 2 225 rack 3 230 rack 4 230
Last test I added small amount of chips with loader and temp increased 15 degrees across the board until chip smoke died. MES was full of smoke and could not see probes for about 30 minutes and opened door to read probes.
I had a bowl of water on rack 2 with the MES meat probe and my 2 stand alone probes laying in it. The MES meat probe consistently reads 20* low. The cable was badly crimped in several places at the factory so maybe this is the issue with the probe.
A couple of things I noticed with the MES case. The bottom outside edge of the door where I normally push to close the door while latching hit 140* window glass was 175*. The small panel on the back side above the power cord was reading 150*. Not sure what is behind this door but was surprised it was getting hot.
Ordered a ET-732 from Todd so maybe I will be good. The wife says stop spending money! Need to figure out how to work in a Food-Saver so I can cold smoke some cheese. Not sure if zip locks will do here.
If you made it this far I am shocked! Looking forward to trying a all night er with another Butt and a brisket!
SmokeOne!