Okay so I have a master built Bluetooth smoker. The Bluetooth range is horrible. I’m trying to figure out a way to hook a nodemcu or esp8266 to the factory board so I can get temp updates on my phone. Has anyone done this yet or have a good idea? I figure everything is already programmed into the factory board so essentially the nodemcu would just have to act as a repeater? I could be way off in my thinking though. Any help would be appreciated!
The ESP8266 does not offer bluetooth support, so you’re going to need to find a way to interface directly with the existing controller which might not be trivial. The ESP32 does offer a bluetooth stack but that hardware platform is still being worked out (there are bugs in the 1.0 hardware) and the BT stack isn’t yet mature.
I guess I should have said I don’t care about the Bluetooth. I’m assuming the factory board has all the necessary stuff programmed to read the temp probes since it can send the info to an app that they created. I want to pull that info from the factory board. I want to read what the factory board is spitting out with a esp8266 and connect it with smartthings. Does all that make sense or am I completely crazy? Lol
It does make sense, you’re not completely crazy, but also expect that this might not be quite as easy as you suggest. You will be interfacing with existing gear whose schematics you don’t have, so you’re going to have to do a fair bit of reverse engineering to make this fly. Most boars for low-cost items like this don’t tend to spit out their readings through a commonly-accessible debug interface. Have you taken a look inside yet? Do you know what microcontroller is in use?
Full disclosure, I tend to over simplify things in my head. I realize what I am suggesting is probably going to end up being extremely complex. I’ll be pulling it apart later on and will report back with my findings and some pictures.
If you want a very easy method to integrate a temperature sensor with SmartThings, via a NodeMCU board, take a look at my ST_Anything project below.
You’ll need to determine what type of temperature sensor your smoker uses, or find a suitable replacement sensor capable of handling the temperature range. My project does support the Adafruit MAX31885 thermocouple which was added for a user wanting to monitor oven temperatures (although I haven’t tried compiling the class for that sensor in over a year, so it may need tweaks for use with a NodeMCU ESP8266 board. It was used with an Arduino originally.)
Purchase a Loki meat thermometer… I just received a few weeks back via kickstarter, and is wifi/bluetooth enabled.
I also have a masterbuilt smoker but mine does not have bluetooth. Mine came with a remote witch apon close examination i found an a7105m 2.4ghz board that it uses to comunicate. Not sure of the modle smoker you have but i think that would be a good place to start. Also if im on to anything here i am also intrested in doing this and any help with interfacing the esp8266 with the a7105m would be greatfull