Notes On Operating The CyberQ Cloud
A few things we'll point out about using the CyberQ Cloud controller:
- 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. In the case of the CyberQ Cloud, 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.
- 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.
- This will become obvious after you use the Share My Cook website for a while, but in order to monitor your cook and see a real time
graph of the temperature over time, you must create a cook, and then start recording.
- We have found that you can avoid trouble by always remembering to stop recording on a cook when it is done, and
always creating a new cook each time you use the CyberQ Cloud with Share My Cook.
- Alarms are communicated either via the controller display and beeps, emails or text messages. Alarm conditions do not show up
on the "Current Status" tab at Share My Cook, nor do they show up when viewing a cook at Share My Cook.
- You do not need to be connected to WiFi or use your smart device to use the CyberQ Cloud controller. You
have access to all the basic functions needed to use the CyberQ Cloud on the unit itself.
- Communications between the CyberQ Cloud controller and the Share My Cook website can be slow and erratic at times. While
watching the various data recording items on Share My Cook, we noticed that updates could occur anywhere between 15 seconds and
over 3 and a half minutes. Sometimes it appears that even though Share My Cook records the connection status as "Good", no data
is flowing from the controller to the web site, requiring a reboot of the controller. At one point, our CyberQ Cloud controller
would no longer connect to the cloud. It just sat at "Connecting To Cloud" forever. It had somehow lost track of the netork it
was supposed to connect to and required going through the WiFi setup steps again. For the most part, things went smoothly, but
these hiccups occurred more than we would have liked. However, in all cases, a little fiddling got things working again.
- The CyberQ Cloud controller takes about 2 minutes to come up initially. This isn't necessarily a problem, but it
somthing you might want to keep in mind as this is relatively slow compared to other controllers.
CyberQ Cloud Open Lid Control Results
How well does the CyberQ Cloud handle opening the lid of your cooker? We conducted two tests, one with Open Lid Detect turned
off and one with Open Lid Detect turned on. We let the cooker get stable at 300°F and then opened the lid for 60 seconds
before closing it. Here's how the two tests compared:
So, with Open Lid Detect turned off, the cooker spiked at 20°F above the target temperature and took 9 minutes 50 seconds
to recover. With Open Lid Detect turned on, the cooker spiked at 10°F above the target temperature and took 6 minutes 33 seconds
to recover. Based on our experience this shows that the CyberQ Cloud doesn't do all that bad a job even without Open Lid Detect turned
on, and of course does even better with it turned on.
CyberQ Cloud Control Results
How well does the CyberQ Cloud actually control the temperature of your cooker?
Here are the results that we obtained when allowing the CyberQ Cloud to control a large Big Green Egg at low, medium and
high temperatures:
| Target |
Accuracy |
Swing |
|---|
| Low |
+0.7° F |
±2.1° F |
| Medium |
+0.2° F |
±2.5° F |
| High |
+0.4° F |
±3.1° F |
|
|
CyberQ Cloud Results
|
As you can see, the CyberQ Cloud results are quite good, and in fact, in line with the best controllers that we
have tested.
Summary
Here is a list of Pro's and Con's we experienced during our testing:
| Pros:
Top notch temperature control.
Feature-rich. Contains most every feature you could ask for in a temperature controller. Open Lid Detect, Ramp Mode,
Timer-based actions, Adaptive Control, Text/Email alerts, up to 3 food probes, Amazon Alexa/Echo enabled.
Share My Cook website has both remote monitoring/control as well as recipe/cook history archiving and sharing.
All control functions available on the controller itself. No need for internet/cloud to run your cooker.
More accurate Type-T thermocouple probes.
BBQ Guru devices have always been of high quality, backed by first class customer support.
|
Cons:
Sometimes unstable/slow communications with cloud.
Graphing functions only have 1 minute resolution.
No blower data available for graphing.
No App available, web interface only. (Most people consider Apps to be more convenient and secure.)
No alarms on Share My Cook. You MUST enable text or email alerts to receive alarms if you are remotely
monitoring your cooker.
|
Other than the issues we noted with Cloud communications, The CyberQ Cloud is a first rate temperature controller. It is
rich with features and does its main job of controlling the temperature of your cooker extremely well. This controller
deserves its place on the top shelf of temperature controllers on the market.
Availability
BBQ Guru products are available for sale at their web site and in many BBQ stores. They are also available on Amazon and
can be seen using the following links. (We receive a small percentage of any items sold through by Amazon through our web site.)
Contact Information
The BBQ Guru
353 Ivyland Road
Warminster, PA 18974
215-674-9992
800-288-GURU (4878)
Web: www.thebbqguru.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheBBQGuru
Email: customerservice@thebbqguru.com
|
