The Stoker

One of the issues I had with my old pit was control. At first I loved the whole BBQ dynamic: watch the temp, adjust the temp, watch the temp, adjust the temp. Hopefully after a day of doing this, food would be ready. Then we had a kid. I quickly found the days of minding a pit were over. Babies require even more tending than a pit. So this is when my Q days dwindled...

During my research for a new smoker, I learned about the BBQ Guru (Thebbqguru.com). Great product. Basically it controls the pit for you. It is 3 part unit: Control unit, fan, and probe(s). The Probe hooks to the grate and tells the unit your temp, the unit then tells the fan to push air onto the fire to get it hotter, or it cuts off air to lower the fire. You can add a second probe for meat temp. For several hundred dollars you can get a wireless unit. Then a guy on the Grill Dome Forum(another great grill, but hard to get since it is a smaller operations. I had a 6-8 week wait before shipping) told me about the Stoker.

The Stoker (Rocksbarbque.com) is similar to the Guru in that it controls your pit. But it does so much more. It allows for multiple pit control with one unit, and the best part? it has a NIC card built in. That is Network Interface Card, with a webserver. On the back, is an Ethernet jack that allows the Stoker to be plugged into a wireless hub and accessed, they say, from anywhere in the world, by any web browser. To me, this was a no brainier. As long as it worked with a Mac. Yes, I use a mac. Oh, don't be surprised. I crossed over years ago, and will never return (or so I thought). Basically, you plug the stoker in to the wireless router, and the Stoker is assigned an IP address. You type that into your browser, and boom, the stoker software shows up. It looks like this:



Well I found that it will work with a mac since it can be accessed from any web browser, but due to my research, I found there was something I would be missing: Stokerlog.
The same guy who turned me onto the Stoker is a code writer. So after he fell in love with the stoker, he wrote some software to add a bit to the Stoker software. What he came up with is a nifty piece of work. It goes out and gets the info off the Stoker, and allows for you to control it without a browser. It will email you information, send your phone a text message, and track your cooks. You can have an entire history of your cooks with this unit.


The issue? It only runs on Windows. I know! According to forums everywhere, there are several coders writing a Mac version, but until then, Windows only. So I had to install windows on my Mac. Yes the picture you see to the right is Stokerlog running in Parallels (Parallels.com). I know, I know. But what can you do? Anyway, this is one slick machine. I will be live testing it out ASAP. Just have to hit the Butcher.