Things you should do before trying to use this program with your Stoker.

Setup, This application now access e-mail directly, therefore you will need to know your email Settings. If you are an AOL user, it's probably a good idea to setup a new e-mail account at Gmail.com It's free and easy to setup and use. In setup you'll find fields for your e-mail address, this could be your cell phone text message service. For Verizon it's your 10 digit phone number @vtext.com, I have no idea about the rest. The mail from is important especially if you have a service like comcast.net. The from address has to be from a comcast account. Some email services don't care so play around with it and make sure it's working before assuming it will. The smpt mail server is from your email provider. Gmail is smtp.gmail.com . Some email servers require authentication, this is your email account name and password. Gmail uses SSL (Security), some servers do not. Try it both ways to find your setting. In some cases this program will bomb if you try to use SSL and it isn't available. Just restart and try again.

Once you get that right, and you know your stoker IP address, you're ready to go.

On the main page there is a check box for "Include Stoker information" When checked, it will try to establish connection to your stoker using the IP provided in the setup page, then indicate the status of your stoker.

E-mail notification must be checked to receive e-mail alerts. duh...

The three timers. These are one shot timers, When they expire, an alert will sound and and e-mail will be sent if it is desired. (e-mail Notification box). These timers can also be used to reset a Stoker probe set temperature. For instance, you can tell your control probe from 225 to 275 in 90 minutes. To use this feature, put in the minutes, (or you can use the form of 1:30 for 90 minutes) then double Click the message field. This will open a new form and scan for valid probes. Once found, you can select one from the list and fill in the new set temperature. Press set to complete your selection. You can use this method on all three timer message fields. Press the start button to initialize these timers. These timer values are remembered once started, even if you crash and burn. Once you get the program up and running again, it will restore these time setting.

RampEvents - Ramp events are events cause by a temperature swing. For instance you can tell the stoker to change the control temp to 300 when your turkey reaches 100°. I do that so my turkey gets plenty of smoke but cooks fast at the end to stay juicy. Works for me. You can choose temperature rising or falling. Choose these events carefully, right now I don't let you edit. It's not that I don't trust you, I just haven't done that yet. I will, later. If you mess up, exit the program and restart, it will kill the old ones and you can start fresh. I also tell the stoker to reduce the temp once my target temperature has been reached. So when my turkey gets to 160, my stoker kicks back to 200. If you want it do anything after that, think about temperature falling events. Each time one of these events occur an e-mail alert is issued if so desired. Ramp events are executed in the order they are created, it will never do 2 before 1, so plan accordingly. If you are trying to control 2 control probes, start the program twice and run one cooker with program 1 and the other with program 2. The e-mail subject field will let you know which alert you are getting.

Checkin Interval - entering any number here starts the interval timer. These units are minutes, it will continue to notify every XX minutes until you exit the program or empty the field. If you use this and the "Include Stoker information is Checked, it will report on the status of each probe it finds, up to 6, I think, but I have only 3 to test, so try it and let me know. It will also notify you of any events that have occurred recently, like a timed temperature change. When this timer event occurs, it notifies you of the last observed probe reading. Reading are updated every 90 seconds, so your information could be 90 seconds old, that seemed close enough for me and the logic was more practical.
Under the file menu, there is an Events log. This is time events, ramp events, and timer notification events. The stop watches do nothing but act as stop watches, no alerts or anything like that. You can pop up as many as you like, start, pause and stop. Kinda handy when you need one.
 

New feature - I have added a feature that will, if you desire, track one probe for temperature change rate. Each time the program reads the Stoker, every 90 seconds, it records the time and reading for the probe you choose. After a minimum of 11 recording, or 15 minutes, it compares the beginning temperature with the ending temperature. From those time and temperature reading it computes temperature change per hour and records that value to the screen and reports by e-mail during normal notification. After 21 recordings, it computer rate of change based on the most recent 30 minute interval to produce the rate of change per hour. So a 4° increase in 30 minutes would display a reading of  [ roc=8°/hour ]. This might not produce a perfect estimate of when the food should be ready, but it's closer than just taking a wild guess. The real reason was to let me know when the meat has reached the "no rise" shelf temperature. This generally occurs at around 150° with brisket. To use this feature put the serial number of the probe you want to track in the appropriate field in the setup screen. The quick and nasty way to do this is - click the "include stoker info" checkbox on the opening screen. When the browser below updates, click on show S/N and update. When you read the screen again, highlight and copy the serial number of the probe you want to track. Then open the setup screen and paste it into the "Probe s/n" field.


Bugs, if you find one, please let me know. Be clear about what happened and what was going on when it happened. I don't like bugs, but I enjoy fixing them, go figure. I'm a terrible typist and a bad speller, so if you find an error like that, just tell me, I can take it. If you don't like the program, uninstall it. Don't tell me why, I don't care. It's free and it works for me. I wrote this because I wanted more freedom when I cook and I don't like to worry about what's going on when I'm gone, whether it be to work, to golf, or to fish. Amir is working on some of these things, but I wanted to learn asp.net and V# programming, and this was as good a place as any to start.

Known Issues: Interactions with Amir's StokerLog, Pinging your stoker could cause StokerLog to hang temporally. It says to restart but a refresh generally does it. If you use the AutoLid Detect, be aware. Amir's program will be unaware of your temperature set changes. If you have selected a temperature shift by time or ramp event, the Auto Lid detect will change it back to the temp selected on StokerLog when the Lid event has passed. You can avoid this by #1 , don't use the auto detect, #2 Refresh StokerLog with F5 before you open the lid. This is also true of the Keep Warm feature, and is only effected by RampEvents and time Temp events. I use the Timer Ramp event for the keep warm by adding a ramp event to lower temp of control probe to a temperature below the desired meat temperature when desired meat temp is achieved.  

My thanks to Amir for encouraging me to give Visual Studio 2005 a try.