# Recommended PID settings for Auber WS-1211GPH and MES40



## hkeiner (Aug 9, 2019)

Hi,

I just purchased the Auber WS-1211GPH PID for my Masterbuilt MES 40 smoker and have the following questions:

A) Can anyone recommend PID settings that would work well with this smoker? I understand that I can use AUTOTUNE to do this, but not sure how optimal the settings would be. I thought I'd ask here if anyone has come up with better PID settings for the MES40 through trial and error experience.

B) Has anyone changed the Output Power Reduction setting from 100% to a lower percentage to reduce the risk of overheating the PID? I ask because the 1200WATT/10AMP draw by the heating element is at the upper limit for this PID and I thought reducing the output (say to 80%) could provide a little more wiggle room but still work well enough.

Thanks in advance for any feedback.


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## dr k (Aug 9, 2019)

Only reduce the output down from 100% if its a load over 1,200 watts (10 amp) over 90 minutes being continuously on output. My gen 1 40 1,200w element has never been on longer than 1.5 hours but can stay on without overheating the ssr, being the 10 amp or less. The 1210 directions say the same as ws1510elpm but appears to have a 10 amp limit with the same instructions. If your out of the box setting is P=7, I=600 and D=150 then 1510 owners can chime in on their Mes 30 settings. The smoker makes a big difference on PID settings between a Mes 30 vs 40 size and the 800 vs 1200w element. I think 

 chopsaw
 mentioned on his 1510 he uses P=10, I=208 and D=210 on his Mes 30.


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## chopsaw (Aug 9, 2019)

hkeiner
 , have you tried it yet ? Use it at the stock settings , empty smoker , and see what it does . Don't start making changes right off the bat . 
Auto tune took mine in a wrong direction . 
I think if you paid for a fully adjustable controller you should learn how to set it . It's not that hard when you put some thought into it . If you just start setting values , you will never get it . 
Read the manual . Ignore the flow charts , to confusing . 
Know what each setting does . Write it down in your own terms . Then you can adjust one factor at a time . 
Is it not getting up to temp fast enough , then make that change , and so on . 

If you would be happy with a on off setting , then go with that . I feel that PID is the way to go . There is no reason why you can't set it up yourself . That's what you paid for . I understand the concerns for the wattage vs the output . 
Pay attention to what Kurt is saying in post #2 . He is on the money with this stuff . I'll be watching to see what you come up with .


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## hkeiner (Aug 12, 2019)

Thanks everyone for your replies. I recently ordered the PID from Auber to replace the digital control unit that recently failed and I have not installed it yet.

My plan is to first use the default PID settings (P:7, I:600, and D:150) and see if they work OK. My next step will be to try AUTOTUNE to see if there is an improvement. If someone experienced with using a PIDed MES40 suggests alternate PID settings I'd give that a try too.

I do not intend to manually tinker with the PID settings myself. A while back I installed a PID on an espresso machine and found that AUTOTUNE worked acceptably well (although a bit slow to heat up the boiler from cold) and that tinkering with the PID settings to speed things up was difficult, frustrating, complicated, prone to error, and ultimately unsuccessful. I gave up and reverted to the AUTOTUNE settings in that case.


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## chopsaw (Aug 12, 2019)

hkeiner said:


> My plan is to first use the default PID settings (P:7, I:600, and D:150) and see if they work OK. My next step will be to try AUTOTUNE t


You have the right mind set there , good plan .



hkeiner said:


> I do not intend to manually tinker with the PID settings myself. A while back I installed a PID on an espresso machine and found that AUTOTUNE worked acceptably well (although a bit slow to heat up the boiler from cold) and that tinkering with the PID settings to speed things up was difficult,


Auto tune took my MES out of full power way to early . If you get to this point , we can help you . Just know what the stock settings were ( sounds like you do ) and you can always re set it . DO NOT shy away from setting it up your self . I'll get my notes out and take a look at my " laymen terms " . You don't need a choo choo license to know this stuff . Like said above I'm watching to see if you need help .


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## tallbm (Aug 12, 2019)

hkeiner said:


> Thanks everyone for your replies. I recently ordered the PID from Auber to replace the digital control unit that recently failed and I have not installed it yet.
> 
> My plan is to first use the default PID settings (P:7, I:600, and D:150) and see if they work OK. My next step will be to try AUTOTUNE to see if there is an improvement. If someone experienced with using a PIDed MES40 suggests alternate PID settings I'd give that a try too.
> 
> I do not intend to manually tinker with the PID settings myself. A while back I installed a PID on an espresso machine and found that AUTOTUNE worked acceptably well (although a bit slow to heat up the boiler from cold) and that tinkering with the PID settings to speed things up was difficult, frustrating, complicated, prone to error, and ultimately unsuccessful. I gave up and reverted to the AUTOTUNE settings in that case.



Sounds like you got a decent approach.  Lets hope one or the other works well for you.
I personally put my PID smoker probe under the center of the lowest rack and always use the lowest rack.  This is because it is the fastest spot responsiveness in my MES but you can go about it anyway you like that works for you.  I also do not use the water pan, my heating element is flipped and uncovered lol :)


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## dr k (Aug 13, 2019)

I'm like chopsaw and didn't like out of the box settings or autotune and the PID started flashing/pulsing 120vac too early and I waited longer than the original mes controller to preheat. He has a 30 and I have a 40 and I smoke brisket, ribs and pork butt naked no wrap the whole time at 275 with vent fully open so the hotter the more airflow and different settings maybe in order.


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## sigmo (Aug 16, 2019)

This is all interesting.

I have designed control systems and the like for over 40 years, so I understand where @Richard Foster is coming from!

There are a number of different PID control algorithms, and without knowing the particulars, it's hard to even offer advice about tuning a PID control.

Over the years, I've had good and bad luck with different PID controllers' autotune.  Some have been phenomenally great (some Fuzzy Logic PID controllers I got many years ago from Omega Engineering).  They were nothing short of miraculous!  I wish they still sold those exact units.

But I've also run into units whose autotune ended up creating more work than manually tuning.  Of course, different systems require different tuning methods, so it's not entirely fair to blame a unit's autotune unless you're comparing it against another controller in the same system.  And even then, you need to understand how the autotune is implemented to know if it will be of much use or not.

As Richard has pointed out here, and in some other threads, the whole idea of using a PID controller for a smoker is usually overkill, and, being quite complex to truly understand, can lead to more problems than it solves.

But, as has been pointed out elsewhere (perhaps also by Richard), almost all temperature controllers that you can find these days include PID control because they almost all use a microcontroller, and once you've got a microcontroller, a display, and a few buttons, why not include PID and other fancy features (ramp and soak, etc.)?  It costs nothing in production to have these features in the program once its written.

So when one goes shopping for a cheap temperature controller these days, you're almost certainly going to get a PID controller.  And as a result of that, when us smoking hobbyists are shopping for an external controller to retrofit one of our off-the-shelf smokers, what we end up with is a PID controller.  So we've all taken to referring to any external or aftermarket temperature controller as a PID controller.  And that's not wrong.

But as Richard has pointed out, for most of us, we really don't need the PID functions for our smoker.  And in fact, as this very thread points out, the PID functions may well be something of a hindrance to getting what most of us want.

What people are mostly after with an external or aftermarket temperature control is to get away from what are often seen as poorly-implemented or faulty temperature controls that come with our smokers from the factory.

This has been covered before, but certainly one reason for wide temperature swings in the MES smokers is their use of the main (only) heating element to not only control the temperature of the smoker, but also periodically ignite the smoke chips.  To do that, they must crank the heating element on full bore, and for a fairly long time, every so often so that the chips will be ignited.

But doing that means that you simply cannot have precise temperature control in the smoker.

And then there are issues with the average temperature even being (or at least appearing to be) incorrect.

Some of that appearance of inaccuracy comes from incorrect ways that we measure the temperatures in our smokers.  And some of it comes from the smokers actually sucking!  :)

But in any case, a lot of us decide that we want to modify our smokers to use a  separate or aftermarket temperature control system, and at the same time (because this will be necessary and better) we want a separate aftermarket smoke generator system.

If we are to have smooth and precise temperature control, we cannot also use the stock smoke generating system of the MESs.  So we go with something like an AMNPS or the tube smokers, and then modify the smoker itself to use a different temperature controller.

That's all just great.

But now, since the controller we bought has PID functionality, we often feel compelled to use it.  But with may of these controllers, you don't have to use the PID functions.

I've never used the Auber units, so I cannot speak to how one goes about changing its settings so that you get a plain old "bang-bang" controller.  Or perhaps just a proportional control, with no I or D terms.

But if you can disable at least the I and D terms, and set the Proportional band to something reasonable, you may not need to do anything else.

And if you can disable all of that, and just set a small hysteresis value and run the control in "bang-bang" mode, that will typically be fine, too.

And this might be better for most people who don't want to fiddle with the whole PID thing.

As I said, I've done control system design for at least 40 years.  And I appreciate the value of PID control for many systems.  You really can optimize things with a properly tuned PID control system, and you can do even better if you have a combination of PID control AND the functions of a PLC or other computer control system that lets you change the parameters of the PID loop(s) on the fly, based on other information or something of an adaptive or "learning" bit of extra code.  This is often necessary because as certain variables change within a system, often one set of PID parameters is not ideal for all situations that the system will encounter.

But again, most of us don't want to deal with any of that just to run our smoker.

If you do want to delve into tuning your PID controller, that's just fine.  It can be fun, and since this is largely a hobby for most of us anyhow, why not add that to the whole thing?

A heater system like a smoker is one of the most simple of control systems, and should be one of the easiest types of system for which to tune a PID.

But there are things to keep in mind.

One of the first things that comes to my mind is that the tuning parameters for an empty smoker will be quite different from the correct parameters for a full smoker.  The heat "load" presented by a lot of wet-on-the-outside meat will be totally different from the "load" presented by a small amount of dry-on-the-outside meat, or an empty smoker.

Next, we also have the issue of temperature gradient from the inside of the smoker to the outside.  If you're running the smoker fairly cold, and it's hot outside, there will be a LOT less heat loss from the smoker than if you're running the smoker at a high temperature and it's very cold outside.  And this will affect the optimum tuning of the PID loop.

So the trick is to have a way for the controller to adapt to various scenarios, either manually, or automatically OR to find a "happy medium" tune that works pretty well for any temperatures or loading of the smoker.

The upshot of that is this:

If you're going to use the autotune function of your PID controller, you need to do that right.

Ideally, you'll perform the autotune with the outdoor weather the same as it will be at your location "on average".

You'll choose a smoking temperature that is what you'll mostly be using "on average" for your actual smokes.

You'll start with the smoker at the same temperature as it is outside of the smoker.

You'll "load" the smoker with meat or something to simulate that, using the "average" amount of meat that you expect to be smoking, and with it positioned in the smoker the same way you will normally be loading the smoker when actually using it.

Then, and only then, do you initiate the autotune sequence.

Ideally, then, the tuning parameters that the autotune generates and stores will be good for your average actual use.

Don't autotune with the smoker empty!  Things will happen a lot faster with an empty smoker, and the parameters the autotune arrives at will probably be such that then, when you actually put some meat in there, it will take longer to reach the setpoint than what you expect.  Basically, you're throwing all of the timing assumptions out the window if you tune with an empty smoker.

For manually setting one of these up, if it was me, and I didn't want to mess with it a lot, I'd start out with no I or D at all.  Then I'd set the P (gain) to a setting that worked over a range of about 5 degrees F or so.  Even if that ends up cycling the heater all of the way on and off, what have I really lost?

Here's a good article about basic PID tuning:

https://wescottdesign.com/articles/pid/pidWithoutAPhd.pdf

And I found these talks about PID tuning by ABB to be quite excellent:


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## sigmo (Aug 16, 2019)

Richard Foster said:


> Well done, sir. Thank you.
> As I've also noted elsewhere, in many pellet grills use of PID actually detracts from performace as a smoker because the PID loop is so intent on maintaining a set temperature, it dribbes pellets a fewcat a time, into a fairly active blaze resulting in less smolder and smoke as they light off so quickly. While the bang bang approach as you call it,  ends up feeding more pellets into a smaller fire at the low set point. Therefore you get more pellets smouldering before they light off which yields more smoke and less need for a secondary source of smoke like smoke tubes etc.
> It's a practical kinda thing. Just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean that you should it because you might actually hurt yourself if you do.



YES!  :)

The other day, a guy posted that he wasn't getting enough smoke flavor from his smoker, and was asking about how to use a separate smoke generator with it.  He thought that his smoker was all-electric, and posted to this part of the forum.

When he posted a link to show his smoker, it turned out that the one he linked to was what is called a "pellet smoker" in this forum.  Yes, it plugs in, and needs 120VAC power to run, but it generates its heat by burning pellets.  It needs the electric power to run the controller, pellet feeder, and a blower that stokes the pellets.

I ran into one of those at a local Wal Mart a while back, and was excited because it was larger than my MES-40, and has adjustable rack positions.  It would have been a nice upgrade.

But when I looked closer, I found that it wasn't really an "electric smoker".  It had a huge pellet hopper (it held 60 pounds of pellets!) and the specifications in the manual showed that it only used 250 Watts of electric power.  So I was disappointed because what I wanted was a larger, better all-electric.

But there's an upper limit to the size you can make an all-electric smoker if it's going to plug into 120VAC and run on a typical household circuit.  So if I want such a large smoker, and I want it to be all-electric, it will have to run on 240VAC.  But with a pellet burner, you can get as much heating power as you'd like while still using very little electricity.

I've read other complaints about pellet burners not producing as much smoke flavor as people want.

With a blower stoking the pellets, I'd imagine the pellets would not smolder as much as they'd burn rather fiercely like they do in a pellet stove designed for heating your house.  And thus, I'd imagine that they'd produce less smoke than you might want.

And with a fancy controller running any sort of smoker, you might have the same problem.  I've seen modifications for various types of smokers that control the speed of a fan or blower that blows on the fuel to make it burn faster or slower.  And with this very steady burning, you may get less smoke than what the original design would have given you.

So I do like the idea of separating the heating of a smoker from the smoke generation.  If you tie the two together, you are doomed to having the smoke be dependent on factors that you really don't want involved.

That's always going to be more complex and cost more, so I can see why Masterbuilt and other electric smoker manufacturers try to design their units to use one heating element for both chores.  But it will never be ideal.

It's fun to play with all of this and see what people are doing.  I'm always amazed at the technical expertise of a lot of the folks on this forum.  It seems like smoking attracts a wide range of people with a huge range of experience and expertise!  That makes for a great forum.


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## sigmo (Aug 17, 2019)

I hope I'm not derailing this thread too far with this, but all of this comes up, so:

That's one of the things I figure people might like about a pellet smoker.  People want to simulate a wood-fired smoking/cooking setup.  And while you have good control with one of these modern pellet smokers, you also get the effect of heating by burning wood, which is closer to the traditional ways of smoking and cooking meat.

I guess one of the things people miss when using an electric smoker is that "smoke ring" effect.  And I'd expect a pellet smoker to give you that smoke ring just the same way a wood fire type smoker would do.

I'm not very familiar with the pellet smokers.  I need to learn more!

Do they control temperature purely by controlling how fast they feed the pellets (like a pellet stove for home heating), or do they also adjust the blower speed as well?  And could you feed in some pellets, blast them with air to get them going, then shut down the blower (or throttle it back some) to get a phase with more smoke generation, then fire the blower back up in a cycle after every "dump" of pellets?  The possibilities, if we have a microcontroller, are endless!  :)

It seems like using a blower will burn the pellets most efficiently.  But to get the kind of smoke we want, adjusting the amount of air blowing on the burning pellets seems like it would change the way the pellets burn, and adjust the speed of burning (and thus, the heat output) and also change the character of the smoke, too.

People are always shooting for TBS (thin blue smoke), and that's an interesting thing.  The "color" you see when viewing smoke is due to the particle size, and thus the type of scattering that you get.

A physics professor at MIT has a set of physics lectures on YouTube, and he has a few where light scattering is discussed.  He uses a demonstration where he shows that the smoke from a smoldering cigarette looks blue because the particle size is tiny, and thus, the type of scattering (Rayleigh scattering) tends to scatter the shorter wavelengths but allows the longer wavelengths to pass through.

On the other hand, when he takes a puff from the cigarettes, and holds it in his lungs for a while, then exhales it, the "smoke" looks white.  This is because the smoke particles have acted as nucleation sites on which water from his lungs has condensed, so the exhaled smoke consists of water droplets, which are much larger than the original smoke particles, and thus, scatter light in a different way (Mie scattering) which scatters all wavelengths, thus it looks white.

This is why clouds look white, but the sky looks blue.  It's also why sunsets look red.



Jump ahead to approximately 35.5 minutes into the video.  Or watch it all, it's all really interesting!

Anyhow, I've wondered if one could use a sort of "turbidimeter" to view the light scattered at 90 degrees from a light beam, looking at the smoke exiting a smoker, but analyze the color spectrum of this scattered light to help optimize or at least analyze the smoke and try to achieve the "best tasting" smoke.

And thinking of a smoke generator like, for example, "the smoking gun" type, if you could adjust the air-flow over the pellets to get the best tasting smoke that way.

One of the problems with looking at the smoke coming out of the chimney of a smoker to judge its color is that if your meat is moist and the outside temperature is cool, you'll get condensation of droplets of moisture, and that will make the smoke look grey or white even though the smoke itself, before it picks up moisture inside of the smoker and then condenses as it exits, may be just right.

And this plays into the different types of smokers.  Burning wood, burning charcoal (perhaps with wood chunks added), all electric, gas, and pellet burners.

It seems like they'll all give different kinds of smoke.  And there will be a million variations within each category, depending on how you're running it and all of the other conditions.

And then there's the effect of the other products of combustion that the meat is exposed to while smoking it.

I don't know a ton about all of this, but I remember that a big boiler we had where I once worked burned natural gas to boil the water in the loop.  What was recommended when adjusting the fuel/air ratio was to analyze the carbon monoxide content of the exhaust.  And what amazed me was that for most efficient burning, you actually wanted to have some CO in the exhaust.  I'd have guessed that you always want to have complete combustion, and thus plenty of air in the mix.  But that's not the ideal situation for best efficiency.

And many years ago, my brother took a ceramics class, and I remember him telling me that some of the glazes would not take on their desired color unless the final phase of the firing was done with the oxygen cut way back so that you achieved a reducing atmosphere in the kiln.  This promoted the chemical reactions that created the desired colors in these glazes.

I wonder if having a reducing atmosphere in a smoker as opposed to an oxidizing atmosphere has much effect on the quality of the product, or how it takes on smoke, etc.  And all of this might affect why people prefer different types of smokers.

This gets way far afield, of course, but these things are interesting (even if totally impractical).

I hope the OP and everyone else will forgive me for hijacking this thread to some degree!


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## chopsaw (Aug 17, 2019)

What was the qeustion again ?


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## hkeiner (Aug 17, 2019)

The original question was for anyone actually using a PIDed MES40 and asking what PID settings they are using and would suggest. I’ve since installed the PID on my MES40 to replace the controller that broke and was no longer available as a repair part from Masterbuilt.

I tried the default Bradley PID setting 7/600/150 and found it too slow to get to target temperature from cold and too slow to recover when the door is opened for any period of time. In due time it did reach the target temp and was somewhat stable at that point .

I next tried AUTOTUNE resulting in a 30/253/63 PID setting which was even slower from cold or for recovery but very stable when ultimately reaching the desired target temp.

I can live with a slow startup from cold but not a slow recovery when opening the door to put in meat or move things around. I played around with the I and D settings but found no good results until I tried a previously suggested 3/0/0 PID setting. I found this setting quite good. Heat up from cold and recovery is very fast with under 4 degrees over/under around the desired target temp. I can live with that. :-)

I may tinker with the “I” setting in the future. I’m somewhat convinced that “D” is best left at 0. For now I’ve got a smoker that works and is under reasonable control so yeh!


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## chopsaw (Aug 17, 2019)

hkeiner said:


> I may tinker with the PID settings again in the future but for now I’ve got a smoker that works again and works well enough to use reliably so yeh!


That's great .


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## sigmo (Aug 17, 2019)

hkeiner
:  Is the Auber unit identical to the Bradley?  If not, then the settings from the Bradley may be completely wrong for the Auber.

Different PID controllers will use different PID algorithms.  Further, the scaling of the parameters are unlikely to be the same between brands and models.

What would be the most helpful for you would be settings from someone running the exact same PID controller with the sensor mounted in the exact same place in the exact same model of smoker.  Assuming they are happy with their tuning.

It sounds like you have switched off the I and D terms and are using only the proportional term, and this is working fairly well.

Are there any instructions with the PID unit you are using?

Did you perform the autotune as I described in my post above, or did you try tuning with the smoker empty?


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## tallbm (Aug 17, 2019)

hkeiner said:


> The original question was for anyone actually using a PIDed MES40 and asking what PID settings they are using and would suggest. I’ve since installed the PID on my MES40 to replace the controller that broke and was no longer available as a repair part from Masterbuilt.
> 
> I tried the default Bradley PID setting 7/600/150 and found it too slow to get to target temperature from cold and too slow to recover when the door is opened for any period of time. In due time it did reach the target temp and was somewhat stable at that point .
> 
> ...



Great work!

I'll do some very rudimentry describing of P-I-D settings that will help you know what is going on.  Others can explain in much more detail and precision but here is the layman's explanation.

In a nutshell P is the main setting and then I and D just join in to tighten things more as they play off P.  When you have P dialed in fairly well then you move to the other settings.

Between the settings of the default Bradely numbers and your autotune numbers you can play around with I until you dial it a little more and then from there you can play around with D.

"I" will try to keep you from overshooting too far or dropping to far below your set temp (tightens peaks and valleys).

"D" will try and keep up with the rate of temp changes over time.  So lets say 10 seconds ago you were increasing at about a rate of .2F while under your set temp.  When D makes a check and sees that 10 sec ago you were increasing at .2F but right THIS MOMENT you are at a much higher rate like a rate of 10F vs .2F and you are getting closer to your set temp then it knows that is a fast increase so it will pump the breaks a bit to try and keep the rate of change in check.

Now I tried to explain this simply so I didn't get too detailed but depending on the PID algorithm (steps taken to solve the problem) the behavior could be a little different between devices but this is the gist of it.  I hope this info helps.


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## hkeiner (Aug 17, 2019)

I understand that the PID settings will vary depending on the PID unit and smoker model. That’s why my original question was directed at someone with the same PID unit (Auber WS-1211GPH) and smoker model (MES40)

Having said that, it was still helpful to get suggestions on alternative PID settings. The 3/0/0 setting is not something I would have thought of myself.

AUTOTUNE works great to achieve a specific constant temperature. Unfortunately it also results in a very slow climb to get to the target temp from a cold start or to recover. I experienced the same when I installed a PID on my espresso machine. However, in that situation having a rock solid stable and accurate temp before pulling a shot was the most important to me so the AUTOTUNE created PID settings worked well for me even if I have to wait a bit longer to pull a shot.


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## tallbm (Aug 17, 2019)

hkeiner said:


> I understand that the PID settings will vary depending on the PID unit and smoker model. That’s why my original question was directed at someone with the same PID unit (Auber WS-1211GPH) and smoker model (MES40)
> 
> Having said that, it was still helpful to get suggestions on alternative PID settings. The 3/0/0 setting is not something I would have thought of myself.
> 
> AUTOTUNE works great to achieve a near constant temperature. Unfortunately it also results in a very slow climb to get to the target temp. I experienced the same when I installed a PID on my espresso machine. However, in that situation having a rock solid stable temp before pouring a shot was more important so AUTOTUNE worked better even if one has to wait a bit longer.



P will control how powerful and fast it gets going.  The lower the value the faster it should be.  The issue can be that with a low value by the time it cuts power down the temp could continue to rise making for a big overshoot or peak.

If you start with a pretty good P then the I and D just dial things in more.

If you aren't overshooting by much (peak) or dropping by much (valley) with 3/0/0 then you are golden :)


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## hkeiner (Aug 17, 2019)

Once I have a few live smokes at 3/0/0 under my belt I’ll decide whether I want to make any up/down changes to  “P” to improve things. Once I settle on a “P” that I like I’ll decide if I want to make any changes to “I” to possibly improve things even more.


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## tallbm (Aug 17, 2019)

hkeiner said:


> Once I have a few live smokes at 3/0/0 under my belt I’ll decide whether I want to make any up/down changes to  “P” to improve things. Once I settle on a “P” that I like I’ll see if any changes to “I” improves things even more.



That approach should be a winner!

I believe a P of 3 on an Auber PID means it runs full power until 3 degrees below the set temp.  I could be wrong but this is why a 3 gets you up so fast and recovers so fast.  Armed with this knoweldge you will know how far you want to decrease your P (comes out of full power even closer to set temp) or increase your P (comes out of full power further away from reaching set temp).


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## hkeiner (Aug 17, 2019)

Yes, the P setting is the number of degrees below the desired target setting that full power stops and and reduced power begins. The power is reduced by an equal percentage until the target temp is reached.

In the case of 3/0/0 and a target temp of 225, the power is 100% until 223, 66% until 224, 33% until 225. It also works in reverse as the smoker cools below 225 after overshooting.

If P were 5, then the reduced power would start at 221 on the way up and would be in steps of 80%, 60%, 40%, and 20%


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## sigmo (Aug 17, 2019)

I think you have the effect of I and D reversed.  I is integral, or what we used to call "reset".  D is derivative.

Integral should look at the error over a long interval and try to "reset" the set point to adjust for any lingering error.

D looks at the first derivative.

I tried to download the Auber manual, but I'm not sure which model the OP has, and they sell several.  And the download didn't work on my phone for some reason.

This all points out one problem with all of this.

Some controllers may Express the proportional band in degrees of band width.  Others may Express it as gain (which would have the opposite effect).  So without a good explanation from the manufacturer, we could be tuning backwards!

I'll try downloading the manual when I am at a real PC, and once I know which model the OP has.

But just running it in P mode is likely just fine, and may actually be the best way.  Plain old proportional control is often hard to beat!


Edit to add:

I now see your post explaining the P mode in this controller, and I also was able to view their manual now that I'm at a real PC.  At a real PC, I can see which model of controller you have.

Sorry for hijacking the thread earlier, but since the discussion of using PID controllers with our smokers had been brought up in several threads, and I felt that it was worth discussing.

You're on the right track.  There's nothing at all wrong with using only the proportional mode of the controller.  As @tallbm has advised, you can tweak the I and D values as you have time to experiment with it.


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## sigmo (Aug 17, 2019)

...  No delete of a post allowed, I guess.  ;)


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## dr k (Aug 17, 2019)

At 275 set temp on the WS-1510ELPM I run P mode 1/0/0  because of the max airflow at this temp. The out of the box seting is 7/600/150. So one half degree below set point is flashing for 50% to get back to set point. The resolution is in 1° increments but responds at 274.5°. 2/0/0 is 50% at 1° below set point. 3/0/0 is 272 100%, 273 66%, 274 is 33% and off at 275. At 275 I want the highest output in P mode when the temp drops past set point (off) for the fastest response which is 1/0/0. Smoking at 225 can be 2/0/0. Ramping for fish and sausage starting at 150 is 3/0/0. This is for my Gen 1 40 vent wide open with mailbox mod. If your smoker is smaller and/or a smaller vent hole then settings would be different. If P is 0 then it's an on/off controller like the stock Mes controller so P needs to be 1 or higher . After waiting too long on the factory settings and autotuned settings to get to set point I reread the instruction senario they gave with P mode I believe they used P=7 to figure the % equivlent when flashing/pulsing electricity.


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