Pellet Grill – Getting Started

A lot has changed in the overall way I intend on doing this project. I either currently have or have all of the pieces on order.  The parts that I will be using include:

 

  • Raspberry pi 3+ (including SD Card, power supply)
  • 4 Channel Relay
  • ADS1115 which is a I2C 16 bit analog to digital converter
  • Display (Not sure which one I am using yet most likely a 240Hx320W LED)
  • VL53L0X which is a time of flight sensor with an I2C interface. (this will aid in monitoring the hopper level)
  • HCSR04 Ultrasonic Sensor (Also for hopper level monitoring)
  • Various Molex Style Connectors
  • Various Resistors

So far the Raspberry Pi has been setup (Tutorial Coming Soon) and ready to go.

Using raspi-config I set enabled I2C and set the hostname (grill)

I changed the I2C Baudrate from the default of 100KHz to 400KHz by adding the following to /boot/config.txt

dtparam=i2c_arm=on,i2c_baudrate=400000

Add the following to the bottom of /boot/config.txt as well:

core_freq=250

I am using piFire software to power this so I am running the installer script from their github.

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nebhead/pifire/main/auto-install/install.sh | bash

This process takes a fair amount of time, more to write when I have time.

Ambilight

Difficulty Level: Advanced

Reading Time: Minutes

When I was looking around trying to get this all working, I read in several places that this project required an Arduino. Well, I am here to tell you no it does not, in fact, the Arduino added an entirely new level of frustration.

Let’s begin with the required parts.

Hardware:

Software: