I received an excellent set of questions via PM:
"I have a couple questions regarding the SmoBot. I currently have a Kamado Joe Big Joe. I had a XL BGE in the past and used a [controller brand redacted] to maintain temps. The only thing I did not like is that once it hit temp, the fan rarely kicked on and created a stale smoke environment. It appears your device depends on the natural draft of the cooker and only uses the top vent for control. Is that correct? Does the SmoBot ever go fully closed if there is a temp overshoot, say on a really windy day? How open do you keep the bottom vent generally speaking? Also, have you done any testing on how low or how high of a temp the SmoBot can maintain? "
This was my (long) answer:
I usually set the inlet damper about 1/3 to 1/2 open. If a person is interested in a more opened exhaust, then one could set the inlet damper to a smaller inlet, and the controller would converge on a more-opened exhaust damper setting.
The thing with ceramic kamados, is that the temperature really is a pretty direct function of airflow rate for a given condition. Of course, as the system changes throughout a cook, that relationship changes.
But, my point is, that you can't separate air exchange from operating temperature. So, Kamados will tend to have humid air in them and a low throughput of fresh air all the time, as you're probably aware. The nice thing about smobot relative to the blower setups is that, like you said, the blowers usually "pulse" the flow (not all of them, but several of them). Smobot will find the steady continuous airflow rate that achieves the desired temperature.
But, my opinion aside, I'm comfortable stating that there isn't an issue with bitter yucky food coming off the grill using smobot. We've had way too many serious, and even competition BBQ guys, test the Beta versions for more than a year now - and no complaints.
Yes, there could be moments where the damper is fully-closed if there's an overshoot or something, but if you don't like that, I could always modify the software to enforce a minimum "open-ness" at all times. That's the cool thing about this project, is that our firmware updates that will occur over WiFi will allow us to evolve the control algorithm according to the continued feedback and preferences of the users.
Regarding temperature range - In the neighborhood of 500F it can get a little wobbly, because the charcoal wants to flip/flop between actual flames, and just glowing embers. I haven't yet done any algorithm optimization for operation there, but it really doesn't do too bad.
