Auber SYL-3615
Temperature Controller

Notes On Operating The Auber Instruments SYL-3615

A few things we'll point out about using the Auber Instruments SYL-3615 controllers:

  1. Probably the most important thing to consider is how well the Auber Instruments SYL-3615 controller can control your cooker. We found two things that were vital. First, be sure to use the PID Fan Speed (PID FS) setting under the Control Setting screen, despite what Auber Instruments recommends. Second, we were using a Smokeware Chimney cap on our large Big Green Egg. We found that we got the best results with the top completely closed. There is enough normal leakage to allow some airflow.
  2. Remember that you must plug the Pit probe into the P1 socket, the food probe used for cooking profiles in the P2 socket, and any other food probe into the P3 socket.
  3. While your Auber Instruments SYL-3615 controller is offline, it will still continue to control your cooker, using the last known parameters. When the controller returns online, you will then be able to see it in the App and continue monitoring and controlling it from there.
  4. Temperature updates on the Auber Instruments SYL-3615 App screen appear at about 5-second intervals.
  5. Graphs reset if you turn your controller off and on.
  6. When you start up the App, if the controller is offline, the App will sit at "Loading..." until either you kill and restart the App or bring the controller online.

  7. A frequently asked question about temperature controllers is whether or not you should leave the adapter installed all the time and if so, how do you control air flow when you aren't using the unit. You probably don't want to leave the blower installed all the time. Installing it on your cooker is relatively simple, as is removing it.

  8. Another frequently asked question is how to start up your cooker. Do you start the controller as soon as the fire is lit, or do you get your cooker up to temperature and then let the controller take over? Most controllers we have tested do just fine starting up a cooker from cold. We had better luck with the Auber SYL-3615 by getting the cooker close to the target temperature, then starting the controller.

  9. Placement of the pit probe can be important. There are two schools of thought. One is that you want it located near the meat so that the controller is controlling the temperature at the location of the meat, not somewhere else. However, the probe must not touch the meat and should be at least an inch or two from the meat. If the meat influences the temperature of the probe (especially when the meat is first placed in the cooker and is cold), obviously the controller will be sensing a false low pit temperature and will therefore compensate by overstoking the fire. The other school of thought is that if you are used to cooking by dome temperature (meaning as measured by the thermometer sticking through your dome), then you may wish to place the pit probe on the stem of your thermometer to control the temperature measured at that location.

    That said, the pit probe seems to be extremely sensitive. We seemed to get the best results when using the Auber Instruments SYL-3615 controller when the probe was clipped to the dome thermometer, well away from the fire. Placing the probe anywhere near the fire resulted in very high readings.


Auber Instruments SYL-3615 Open Lid Detection Results

How well does this controller handle opening the lid of your cooker? We tested having Open Lid Detect on and off by getting the cooker as stable as possible at a medium temperature and then opening the lid for 60 seconds before closing it. Here's how the controller performed at each setting:

Auber Instruments SYL-3615
OLD Disabled Results

Auber Instruments SYL-3615
OLD Enabled Results


As you can see, the two results are quite similar. The size of the spike was pretty similar for both cases and the time to recover was also quite similar. About the only difference is that after the lid was closed with OLD on, the size of the temperature oscillations was about 18°F. With OLD off, the size of the oscillations was larger at 28°F. So, you might as well have OLD turned on as you should get slightly better results.


Auber Instruments SYL-3615 Control Results

How well does the Auber Instruments SYL-3615 actually control the temperature of your cooker? Here are the results that we obtained when allowing the controller to control a large Big Green Egg at low, medium and high temperatures:

Target  Accuracy   Swing 
Low +2.0° F ±7.0° F
Medium +2.0° F ±12.3° F
High -8.0° F ±4.2° F

Auber Instruments SYL-3615 Control Results


As you can see in the table above, our results weren't the best we've ever seen. They were also also not the worst we have ever seen. However, these numbers don't really tell the whole story. Getting this controller to produce even these rather ordinary results was not easy.

  • Even when the temperature had settled down into a somewhat even oscillation, it often would take off for 45 minutes of much larger oscillations only to return to the earlier pattern.

  • When letting the controller bring the cooker up to temperature, there was massive overshoot.

  • When trying to increase the temperature by 75°F, again there was a large (50°F) overshoot and it took almost an hour for the temperature to settle down. (Oddly, the controller seemed to be able to handle dropping the temperature without much trouble.)
The Auber Instruments SYL-3615 really needed careful attention in order to get even mediocre results. You definitely need to manually get your cooker close to your target temperature before you let the controller take over. If you want to bump your cooker's temperature up, you should turn off the controller, manually raise the cooker's temperature, and then turn the controller back on. Of course. the downside of this is that you then lose your graph data for the last 2 and 10 hours. And yes, you should turn it off, not just unplug the blower. You need for the controller to forget the PID information that it developed while it was cooking at the lower temperature.

Control over you cooker's temperature with the Auber Instruments SYL-3615 controller is good enough for cooking purposes, but it requires far more work than any controller we have ever tested.

That said, we decided to rerun our tests and play around with some of the PID Control parameters. Sometimes we would get an improvement only to find it got worse at a different temperature. Sometimes we found we could really screw things up. However, we did find one change that made a pretty good improvement. We noticed that the controller seemed to just take too long to react sometimes. So we changed the cycle time (T Control Cycle Time on the Control Setting Screen) from 15 seconds to 7 seconds. This is the amount of time that must elapse before the PID algorithm recomputes what it wants to do next. Then with a whole lot of care and attention, we were able to produce the following results. We must note though, that it usually took two long cycles of wild oscillations before the temperature settled down to this. And note that the low temperature performance got worse:

Target  Accuracy   Swing 
Low +4.9° F ±8.0° F
Medium +2.8° F ±4.6° F
High -0.9° F ±2.6° F

Auber Instruments SYL-3615 Control Results
With Cycle Time Set To 7 Seconds


These results are reallly a mixed bag compared to other controllers, and boy did we ever have to work to get the best results. And remember, we are showing you the best results. At various times, the temperature was all over the place.


Summary

Here is a list of things we did and didn't like during our testing:
Things We Like:

  • Four control modes plus access to PID parameters for the super geek.

  • Contains many of the basic temperature control features. Open Lid Detect, Learning Your Cooker, Alerts, 2 meat probes.
  • Platinum RTD probes.

  • Blower has a damper to help control ambient airflow.

  • Has display and keyboard so Wi-Fi not mandatory.
  • While there is no Cloud support, you can control your cooker from anywhere with Wi-Fi access.
  • You can turn off firmware updates until you are ready to receive them. No updates can occur while you are cooking.
  • Low cost.
  • Things We Didn't Like:

  • All four probes that we tested read 4.0°F lower than the actual temperature, both in an ice bath and in boiling water.
  • While the blower does contain a damper, it doesn't contain a manually adustable damper. It's all or nothing.
  • Very unimpressive temperature control.
  • Controller cannot be used to start a cooker up from cold. You must get the cooker stabilized close to your target temperature and then start the controller.
  • Pit probe is no longer a K-type thermocouple like the older unit.
  • Can't change target temperature without going into cooking profile.
  • If controller is offline, when you start the App it will sit at "Loading..." until you return the controller online.
  • Unit only keeps last 2/10 hours of data for graphing/raw data purposes.
  • Graph does not include the pit target temperature.

  • Raw data only contains 100 entries spread over either 2 or 10 hours. Raw data does not include the pit target temperature.
  • Only Probe 2 (Food Probe) can be used in Cooking Profiles.
  • No alligator clip supplied for the pit probe.
  • No Cloud features like saved cook data or extensive raw data.

  • When we first placed our order for the Auber Instruments SYL-3615 temperature controller, we were excited to get it and see how it performed. We reviewed the original Auber Instrumets temperature controller, the SYL-1316 and the results were truly impressive. Sadly, the SYL-3615 just doesn't live up to its predecessor. Although Auber Instruments has provided a reasonably-priced option for BBQ temperature control that is feature-rich, and while the unit can provide adequate temperature control for all types of BBQ cooking, it requires a lot of work and attention and the results are less than stellar. As we noted earlier, when starting up our cooker, we found we had to manually get the cooker close to the target temperature before starting the controller. As sophisticated as the Auber Instruments SYL-3615's control algorithm is, it should be able to start your cooker up from cold. Most other controllers that we have tested do just fine starting a cold cooker. And even once you get the cooker up to temperature, we found you still need to keep an eye on it. Also, considering that you have access to the PID control parameters, Auber Instruments doesn't provide adequate guidance that ordinary users can understand in order to adjust their controller to achieve better control.

    While we found Auber Instruments support to be responsive and helpful, we feel the list of negatives and the less than stellar temperature control really makes us shy away from recommending this controller.


    Availability

    The Auber Instruments SYL-3615 controller is available from Auber Instruments on their website.


    Contact Information

    Auber Instruments, Inc.
    5755 North Point Parkway, Suite 99
    Alpharetta, GA 30022

    Tech Support: (770) 569-8420

    Web: www.auberins.com
    Tech Email: info@auberins.com
    Facebook: www.facebook.com/auberinstruments


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