Stampede Network error

[pungo]

I recently purchased a Fireboard 2 Drive which is arguably considered the gold standard in temp monitoring. Out of curiosity, I used it to monitor my 590 temps on a dry run and have come to the conclusion RT controller and temp reporting is not nearly as good as advertised. I'm not dissing RT but, on warm up to 180 degrees it lagged 25 degrees behind the Fireboard in temp reporting. At 185 degrees on Fireboard, RT reporting 210 before it all settled down. I ran it for 4 hours and observed temp fluctuations of up to 17 degrees on the Fireboard. All while RT is reporting 225 with a new pit probe and the Fireboard probe mounted adjacent to the RT probe. I know nothing about the world of temperature controllers and reporting, but 17 degrees is nearly 10% reporting variance. Significant or not? All that to say the RT system and app graph are not accurately reporting what is actually going inside the grill.

If the reported temp value accurately showed the real temp variations, the recteq support phone would be ringing off the hook with customers complaining about temp swings. I'm sure they have what's know as buffering (averaging) to make it appear the temp is stable so people don't freak out with minor temp swings. Do these minor temp swings effect the end product of your cooked food, no. We're using fire to cook food, it's doesn't need to be dead on accurate, just in the ball park, to put out good food. People tend to overthink things, it's a outdoor grill

 

[Gonefishin]

I recently purchased a Fireboard 2 Drive which is arguably considered the gold standard in temp monitoring. Out of curiosity, I used it to monitor my 590 temps on a dry run and have come to the conclusion RT controller and temp reporting is not nearly as good as advertised. I'm not dissing RT but, on warm up to 180 degrees it lagged 25 degrees behind the Fireboard in temp reporting. At 185 degrees on Fireboard, RT reporting 210 before it all settled down. I ran it for 4 hours and observed temp fluctuations of up to 17 degrees on the Fireboard. All while RT is reporting 225 with a new pit probe and the Fireboard probe mounted adjacent to the RT probe. I know nothing about the world of temperature controllers and reporting, but 17 degrees is nearly 10% reporting variance. Significant or not? All that to say the RT system and app graph are not accurately reporting what is actually going inside the grill.

I've seen the same. I was also a bit surprised to see the variance but after learning on a charcoal smoker I don't worry about short 20 or 25 degree swings. Try checking the temp in your oven, mine is even worse.

 

[ken g]

If the reported temp value accurately showed the real temp variations, the recteq support phone would being ringing off the hook with customers complaining about temp swings. I'm sure they have what's know as buffering (averaging) to make it appear the temp is stable so people don't freak out with minor temp swings. Do these minor temp swings effect the end product of your cooked food, no. We're using fire to cook food, it's doesn't need to be dead on accurate, just in the ball park, to put out good food. People tend to overthink things, it's a outdoor grill.

@pungo
Kinda what I thought. Somehow I thought a 17 degree variance was borderline unacceptable. Like I said, I know nothing about world of temp reporting and temp variance. App complaints have been common since I bought my 590 two years ago. I use the app to turn it on/off and cursory checks occasionally. Alarm functions are hit/miss so I don't rely on them.

 

[AlanR]

Welcome to the forum...
Curious why you think the issue is "clearly an application bug"?

I've been writing software for over 40 years. It continues to communicate with the rec tech just fine - witness the fact you can still control temperatures read temperatures and so on. The only thing it can't do is download the data once it gets past a certain number of data points.

If it was a network error it couldn't talk to the grill at all..

 

[AlanR]

I've been writing software for over 40 years. It continues to communicate with the rec tech just fine - witness the fact you can still control temperatures read temperatures and so on. The only thing it can't do is download the data once it gets past a certain number of data points.

If it was a network error it couldn't talk to the grill at all..

The app really does get network errors from time to time. But when it does you have to drop the connection and re-establish it. In my view, that's a bug too but one you can work around so it's not a problem really.

Once you get this behavior you are out of luck.

 

[pungo]

It's clearly an application bug. Too many data points to send to the app. It's been happening on every long cook - you know - the thing it's best at... Been doing it for years ..

Welcome to the forum...
Curious why you think the issue is "clearly an application bug"?

I've been writing software for over 40 years. It continues to communicate with the rec tech just fine - witness the fact you can still control temperatures read temperatures and so on. The only thing it can't do is download the data once it gets past a certain number of data points.

If it was a network error it couldn't talk to the grill at all..

I've been developing/testing/manufacturing both hardware and software on complex communications systems for over 40 years and without debugging enabled to monitor what's really going on, the issue can't be properly diagnosed to be determined it's a "bug" in the app. BTW the networking goes far beyond just the phone app to the grill, there's also the RecTeq servers involved in the interaction so your diagnosis is flawed. If the servers are acting up or not scaled to handle the traffic requests, the communications can fail. Best for me to Ignore your posts about this going forward.

 

[C. Keeper]

OUCH

Good thing this is a BBQ forum not a IT forum.

​

 

[AlanR]

Welcome to the forum...
Curious why you think the issue is "clearly an application bug"?

I thought I already replied to this. If I did, my apologies.

I've been writing software for over 40 years. Whenever the amount of data that it has to transfer to your phone exceeds a certain threshold it stops working.

If it were really a network problem, then it wouldn't be able to communicate with the grill at all. That's not the symptom that you see. What you see is that it's perfectly able to talk to the grill change temperatures report temperatures and so on.

The times when it actually has a network problem it is unable to do these things. Personally I think not reconnecting after it's got a glitch is a bug too, but at least that one you can work around easily. This one you cannot.

Once you have too much data you have too much data. You have to kill the cook and start a new one. That starts you out with no data which solves the problem of having too much data.

 

[AlanR]

I've been developing/testing/manufacturing both hardware and software on complex communications systems for over 40 years and without debugging enabled to monitor what's really going on, the issue can't be properly diagnosed to be determined it's a "bug" in the app. BTW the networking goes far beyond just the phone app to the grill, there's also the RecTeq servers involved in the interaction so your diagnosis is flawed. If the servers are acting up or not scaled to handle the traffic requests, the communications can fail. Best for me to Ignore your posts about this going forward.

Apparently I did already reply to it. This reply has a little more detail I guess that's better..