Fireboard or Flame Boss controller?

[Ugur Senturk]

Hi I am quite new to the forum and am jn the market for a controller I have narrowed it down to two items based on availabilty and some research fellow smokers what do you recommend for a controller?

Fireboard with additional controller cable and added varible speed fan(purchased extra)
it also comes with 6 food probes and 2 ambient

OR

Flameboss 300 comes with 1 food probe and 1 ambient and will purchase 'Y' cable and 2 extra probes separetly

Im not too fussed with which is cheaper i want a good quality unit that will be able to control and keep a consistant temp whilst be easy to use connect to without much of a headache. I think they both can be used on various smokers since fans are fairly interchangable and there are attachments if need be. You guys here have great knoweldge and i seek your assistance Kind regards Ugur

P.S Not interested in guru or other brands

Thank you

 

[Mauritius]

I have the fireboard and controller cable hooked up to a pit viper fan. I've used the setup in a Weber kettle and a WSM. Works great, little finnicky in the kettle, but it was mostly user error until I figured it out. No real problems holding either setup at 225 +/- 5 degrees for 6+ hours.


I really really like the fireboard. I've had it 6 months and used it dozens of times. I've run it in two smokers at the same time, one with the fan controller. It's miles above any other thermometer I've used. I don't have any experience with the flameboss.

Here's a screenshot of the last long cook I did with the fan contrler. Pastrami in the Weber kettle. I had a few temp spikes because opening the kettle lid tends to throw things off fast. Nothing terrible though. I also had 4 different pieces of meat that all finished at separate times, so it got weird at the end.

 

[Ugur Senturk]

cool i am initally going to be using it in a WSM . I am honestly leading more towards the Flame Boss where i seen alot of.good things about it here and also because they have a dealer here in Australia where as Fireboard sends it here via mail i have asked them several questions and if they have support here in Australia for warranty reasons etc. The Flame Boss is relativly more expensive and even though having 6 probes is very appealing im not sure how bad i would be needing them but would be good to have as spare i guess. I just to be reassured im getting the better one .
I seen your graph fairly steady nice does it have an app or is it web based??

 

[Mauritius]

I don't think I've ever used more than 4 probes, and that was in two smokers. Two food and two ambient is enough for 95% of what I do. I didn't get the 6 probe package, just an extra ambient. I also got the case which is well built, but a little pricey for what it is.

There's a phone app and a website. You can do a few things on the website that you can't in the app but for monitoring a cook in progress they're basically identical. The website's a little better for viewing past cooks, it shows more info in one graph. Here's what that cook looks like:

 

[Ugur Senturk]

oh that cool just noticed on the right the fan power so the viper fan is that able to be run at varible speed so its not running at full speed all the time it can.hold running at sau 30% for a certain period ?

 

[Mauritius]

Right, the point of the fan controller is to adjust the speed of the fan. So you see when the temp starts to dip the fan kicks in and then slows down as the temp rises again. The green is the fan speed and the yellow is the temp in the smoker.

It's nothing special with the viper fan, I think any fan you get that's controllable can run at variable speeds. You can manually set it to run at a certain %, but that sorta defeats the purpose if you want to use a controller. Sometimes when I get a temp spike I'll turn the fan off, but I've never run it at a set %, just leave it on auto and let it do its thing.

Here's another shorter cook I did that illustrates the fan/temp controller a little better. You see when the temp dips (when I take the lid off to check on the meat) the fan kicks in shortly after and usually spikes to 100% until the temp starts to rise back to the target, and then the fan shuts down. Another cool thing about the fireboard is it has lid detection - so if you take off the lid and the temp falls real fast, it assumes the lid is off and won't run the fan for a set number of minutes. The flameboss probably has that feature as well.

 

[Ugur Senturk]

nice. ok sweet i am waiting for fireboard to email me back about the few questions i asked in regards to warranty and couple other things some you already answered and we see how we go . thanks for your time really appriciate it!