Hi there and welcome!Ok, its my turn. I read thru this whole thread. I had read about these controllers before but was proactive. My last few smokes had horrible temp controls. Over shoot temps, undershoot temps, just temps all over the map and takes long time to correct. I was having temps swings of 30 degrees, at least according to the readout, who knows how accurate that is, but still all over the place. I bit the bullet and ordered an Auber Dual-Probe PID Controller for Bradley Smoker WSD 1220GPH. To be honest, I was just cruising the Auber site, saw this dual probe unit, saw that it was "preprogrammed" for a Bradley Smoker (how different can it be from a MES30). The two smokers appear to be equal in size so I figured why not. Did not now at the time that the Bradley has a smoke generator and this unit will control that as well. Anyway, the Auber arrived this week, I read thru the manual and ohhh boy does this take some head scratching. haha. Anyway, yesterday I tackled the rewiring and today Im smoking some venison roasts that have been brining for some pastrami.
My smoker was slightly different than the original poster in that my power wires from plug wired exactly opposite and my braided wires were different colors. But I used the same philosophy as the original poster. Meaning that his #1 smooth black wire was the "inlet power" to the circuit board. Whereas my inlet power to circuit board was smooth white wire. Original pic #2 smooth white wire was the "inlet power to relay". Mine inlet relay power was smooth black wire. The #3 "outlet power" from relay and #4 "outlet power from circuit board " are braided wires but different colors. Although my colors dont match the original pic, my "ins" and "outs" match up the same. Connected 1 to 3 and 2 to 4. But as mentioned in the thread already at this point it is a "dumb circuit" and shouldnt matter , just smooth wire to braided wire and you will be fine. Example....It was mentioned somewhere in the middle of this thread around page 6 or 7 that someone had a identical setup to mine. That user matched colors even though it was opposite the ins and outs...yet we were both successful in performing the rewire.
As luck would have it I did not have any wire nuts on hand but did have some spade connectors. I did not cut any wires, instead use a jumper wire with 2 males spade connections. Put some heat shrink on the connections I made. Then took some needle nose pliers and crimped the female connections a bit to give a tighter fit. These were actually kind of loose as it was and I was surprised it hadnt failed yet. Made the connections, wrapped with electrical tape, and tucked everything back in the box and replaced cover. Back in business. Smoking some deer roasts for pastrami as I type this and the temps are holding rock steady with little to no temp swings. The pic below is in "warmup phase" and held at 125 for an hour in order to get some "cold/warm" smoke before raising temps. I may go back and try to tune it better to this unit versus the Bradley as I think it starts "throttling" the output too far away from set temp (too soon) and then creeps up to the set point. I think it can be better, will adjust the P value to something that works better for me. Maybe even do the autotune feature. I also read and reread and watched some videos on the unit to make sense of the technical speak in the manual, and then I created myself a "cheat sheet" in laymans terms that I will print out to have on hand for when i want to make changes and program the unit. Currently just using it without the programming. Just one temp mode. And so far I am pleased with it. Well worth the money and effort to have better control of the smoker compared to the OEM controller. Dont wait, just do it. You wont regret it.
Congrats on coming over to the PID side of things! :D
I just got back from my hunting trip and bagged 3 meat deer (2 does, 1 runt of a male that didnt even have knobs or bumps much less horns of any kind) and 1 feral hog.
My brother brought back 2 giant feral hogs and 1 doe.
I think you are going to be more and more impressed with your PID setup and we can help you tinker with a lower P value to help heat up faster if needed.
I look forward to seeing how the venison pastrami comes out. Congrats! :)