Thought I would post that I installed a Savannah Stoker controller in my Camp Chef XT. The factory controller (I had the old duty cycle version) is just OK at best, and didn't perform well in some weather conditions, such as wind. I've been against PID controllers after experience with my Country Smoker CS-450 (now owned by my son), but since the Savannah Stoker has a manual control option I decided to give it a try.

I almost didn't buy the controller, as unfortunately Savannah Stoker doesn't respond to email - I wasn't even sure they were still around, but they are - and there's even a new V5 version of the controller that has a new startup algorithm to help prevent overshoot (not indicated on the website anywhere, but it's what's shipping now). The Camp Chef adapter is also apparently no longer available, so I made my own: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4828394

I haven't cooked anything yet - spent a couple of hours yesterday dialinig in the parameters, but haven't had a chance yet to see how stable things are - it was a bit windy yesterday, so I may end up having to retune a bit, but we'll see after I get some time cooking on it.

The Savannah Stoker is a great controller and I'm looking forward to getting some cooks going with it. I'll post up a review and more details once I get some time on it.

I bought mine about a year ago. The V4.
Was able to get the CampChef adapter then.

The feature I really like is being able to run the fan only.
Great for cold smoking cheese.

I had no problems with email to and from Billy.

So far the controller is great. I've only done some chicken thighs so far, smoked for 45 minutes at 180 then cooked at 300 to temp. I used the auto cook program just for fun, a feature I never expected to really use, but it's pretty cool.

I'll be doing some ribs and smoked baked beans next weekend so I'll see how they turn out.

I expect it'll be a while before I have the params tweaked just right for me, I had to lower outL quite a bit below where it was per the setup guide or temps would not come down at all.

It's great being able to smoke at 180 versus 225 (hi smoke on the stock controller is all that was stable, low smoke always flamed out). With the Stoker, no flame outs! It also gets to higher temps much faster than the stock controller and I have outH tuned down from the defaults.

Looking forward to the next cook, and I'll post it here.

Look pretty tasty. 

 That's a win, win Scott.  As if you just acquired another pit, a much better one.

I'm glad that it's performing to your liking.  I only hear outstanding reports from the Savannah Stoker users.

There is a Savannah Stoker group on Facebook that can be very helpful when it comes to issues/problems that occur related to the controller.

Thanks for the replies. So far, unfortunately I have to say I have very mixed feelings about the Savannah Stoker overall. I'm sure it's just down to tuning, but so far I haven't been able to solve a pretty major issue.

At 275, it's rock-solid stable - that's in the range where I did the chicken and it performed great. At 175 it's also rock-solid stable without any concern about flameouts - and that's a pretty decent feat to keep a pellet smoker stable there. The factory controller would flameout at low-smoke so I never used it.

My problem occurs at 225, where the Savannah Stoker goes into bat-crazy mode, resulting in temperature swings from 180-270. I'm not that concerned about temperature swings in general, but 90 degrees is way too much. The controller basically just bounces between OutL and OutH - on the down swing it runs at OutL until it's too late and the hotrod kicks on. Then it dumps pellets at OutH and by the time it starts to lower the auger duty cycle it's way too late and temps skyrocket until it goes back to OutL and starts the whole cycle all over again. I did try adjusting the PID parameters but so far was unable to tune this behavior out. I did try auto-tune a couple of times so far, and both times it results in some pretty crazy numbers and very different between the two. I'd rather work out optimal manual values anyway.

So, I'll keep tweaking it and hopefully I can get it work right.

I did see the comment about a facebook group, but I do not and will not have anything to do with facebook.

Thanks for the replies. So far, unfortunately I have to say I have very mixed feelings about the Savannah Stoker overall. I'm sure it's just down to tuning, but so far I haven't been able to solve a pretty major issue.

At 275, it's rock-solid stable - that's in the range where I did the chicken and it performed great. At 175 it's also rock-solid stable without any concern about flameouts - and that's a pretty decent feat to keep a pellet smoker stable there. The factory controller would flameout at low-smoke so I never used it.

My problem occurs at 225, where the Savannah Stoker goes into bat-crazy mode, resulting in temperature swings from 180-270. I'm not that concerned about temperature swings in general, but 90 degrees is way too much. The controller basically just bounces between OutL and OutH - on the down swing it runs at OutL until it's too late and the hotrod kicks on. Then it dumps pellets at OutH and by the time it starts to lower the auger duty cycle it's way too late and temps skyrocket until it goes back to OutL and starts the whole cycle all over again. I did try adjusting the PID parameters but so far was unable to tune this behavior out. I did try auto-tune a couple of times so far, and both times it results in some pretty crazy numbers and very different between the two. I'd rather work out optimal manual values anyway.

So, I'll keep tweaking it and hopefully I can get it work right.

I did see the comment about a facebook group, but I do not and will not have anything to do with facebook.

Send Billy an email.  He should be able to help you.

Have you looked at some of the videos in YouTube about tuning it up? Here's one that is pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d9xEfb2JQA

I have looked at all the various videos - both before and after purchase. They definitely helped with the process. I didn't try to contact Billy - partially because it some level I want to figure things out myself if possible.

The good news is I think I finally have it dialed in after about 8 hours of tuning. The following is a probably a bit long, but maybe it helps anyone else trying to tune the Savannah Stoker.

The key to getting things stable for me revolved around increasing the time interval to 30 seconds. My theory (at least for OutL tuning) is that pellet feed at low duty cycles wasn't consistent enough to maintain the fire. While tuning OutL I'd either get flame out, temps would not come down, or temps would bounce around as the fire would light off, then go cold. I think at low duty cycles the auger just wasn't running long enough to feed pellets consistently and temps would drop, then it would finally feed a bunch of pellets and the fire would kick off.

After increasing the time interval to 30 seconds, suddenly everything started to fall into place. Tuning OutL was still a bit tricky - at 12% I'd sometimes get a flame out and at 13% my smoker would not go down to the 160-170 range, but I wasn't having the sort of issues I was seeing with the time interval at 20 (or even 25) seconds. I can live with that.

Next up, I redid the auto-tune. The PID values it came up with seem really crazy - roughly all values at double the factory defaults, yet my XT seems to be performing much closer to my expectations with the Savannah Stoker now. At 250-275 I have temp swings of +/- 10 degrees, and that's perfectly fine by me. With the time interval at 30 seconds I expect a little more temp swing, so a 20 degree range is totally acceptable.

I really like the slow start feature of the V5 controller. Setting it for a 20% feed rate until 145 degrees is working great so far to bring things up slowly and preventing over shoot. I also found tuning OutH down to 60% helped as well - and temps still come up plenty fast. The XT isn't a very big smoker.

I'm smoking up 6 racks of ribs in the little XT tomorrow for a team BBQ and I will see how things go! The smoke phase (3-2-1 method) is planned for 175, then 225 for the crutch phase. I'll see how stable things are tomorrow.

I fully believe that my tuning issues have everything to do with the XT, and not the Savannah Stoker. I suppose being hard headed doesn't help either. :-)

IDK a thing about the SS, but from your cogent description I have a good "feel" for what you did and accomplished.  Good job!

Glad to hear you're close to getting it to where you want to be.     That big hard headed gene I have has got me in some situations quite a bit.  But in the long run I've learned a lot from it too.  Sometimes how NOT to do something is a good lesson too I reckon.

Glad it is working satisfactorily for you.
Took me a few hours tuning my V4 to get it where I was happy with it.

Thanks for the replies everyone, I do appreciate it!

I've still been fighting getting things completely dialed in, so I took the opportunity to go back to basics a bit. First I thoroughly cleaned my smoker - I cleaned the cooking chamber when I installed the S.S., but this time I went ahead and pulled the auger out and vacuumed everything out. Everything was fine there, but it's good to do this every couple of years anyway. I also cut out the auger limiting rod - which is more for high temp grilling, but I did this on the old Traeger 070 (at the suggestion of my ex-bro-in-law who worked for Traeger at the time). I also put together a dust vacuum contraption, which I had always meant to do, but never gotten around to - I'll post that in a separate thread. I even picked up a different brand of pellets - I've been burning Pit Boss because they are cheap at Walmart, but I picked up a couple bags of Lumberjack which I was able to find locally (but a bit expensive and no choice on wood mix).

Long story short (too late!) none of this made any difference and I was still having some difficulties getting the S.S. dialed in where I want it. I think where I've ended up is that my little XT is just not stable at all in a certain band around 225 - the pellet feed is either too low and it flames out, or just enough that temps increase, and it's no surprise when I really think about it that the controller can't cope with this. I spent a couple of hours playing around with manual mode and even I can't keep the temp at 225.

So, I've finally figured that if the smoker isn't stable at 225, I just won't cook there! This was important since I typically use 225 a lot, but I realized, eventually (remember, I admit I'm hard headed!), that the best course of action is to simple adjust my cooking range to where the smoker is stable.

The S.S. has no trouble keeping things at 175-185 which is perfect (this is the most important to me). And it's perfectly stable above 250. Last night I tried the go-grill feature (100% feed rate) and was amazed how hot it got - the stock controller had a lot of trouble getting about 350. Although on the XT you have to be very careful not to go above 400, and not long at these temps or you'll get a hopper fire.

So anyway, there's a long update on this with the hope that it helps someone else out there! And just to reiterate that my issues all have to do with the XT, and not the Savannah Stoker controller.