The Blower

So let's take a look at the blower used by the FireBoard 2 Drive controller. You can use any 12-volt blower such as a BBQ Guru Pit Viper or Flame Boss blower, but we are going to look at (and will be using) the FireBoard blower for the purposes of this review.

The FireBoard blower is rated at 20 CFM, which is far more than enough capacity for most home cookers. The blower has a built-in manual damper, a 4.5-foot cable and a 2.5mm barrel plug. It also has two mounting strips, one on each side, held in place with thumb screws. These strips are used to hold the mounting plates in place. Two mounting plates are included with the blower. The small/medium adapter plate is 2.75 x 1.97" (70 x 50mm), while the large/XL adapter plate is 3.43 x 3.03" (87 x 77mm). We'll talk more about mounting and using the adapter plates in the next section. Until then, here are some views of the FireBoard blower:

Blower Installation Options

The FireBoard Blower comes with two adapter plates as previously noted. These fit into the lower vent guides on many kamado-style cookers. There is also a ball valve adapter available as well as a blower nozzle adapter for kettle grills. We'll take a look at using the adapter plates for kamado-style cookers.

To attach an adapter plate to the blower, you loosen the two thumbscrews on either side so that you can pull the adapter strips out part way. At this point, you can either press the ends of the two strips towards the center and place the adapter plate over the ends of the strips, or you can just remove one of the strips and reinsert it through the adapter plate. If you press the strips together, just make sure not to bend the strips. It doesn't take much of a bend to make the strips extremely hard to insert back into the blower. Once the strips are inserted, press the adapter strips all the way back in and tighten the thumbscrews.

Note that in the photos above, we have oriented the plate so that the two mounting strips fit into the notches in the adapter plate's opening. You can also rotate the plate 90° and the strips will still hold the adapter plate in place if you press them tightly against the plate. You might want to do this in order to keep the blower oriented with the air intake downward so as to minimize the chance of something getting sucked into the blower. However, it would have been slightly more convenient if the opening had notches on all four sides.

As you can see in that last photo, once the strips have been pressed all the way in, the thumbscrews tightened and the adapter plate held firmly in place, the blower is now ready to be mounted on a kamado-style cooker. Below we show the adapter plate installed on a large Big Green Egg cooker. (For the sake of clarity we show the plate without the blower attached in the first photo, but of course, you will install the plate on the blower before installing both on the cooker.)

We will note that we found it nearly impossible to mount the blower onto a small Big Green Egg using the smaller plate. If you intend to use your FireBoard 2 Drive controller with smaller cookers, we would highly recommend using a BBQ Guru Pit Viper blower. BBQ Guru makes (at last count) 24 different adapters for various types of cookers. These adapters are made specifically for their intended cooker and they fit well and work well. We gave up trying to mount the FireBoard blower on our small Big Green Egg and finally resorted to using the BBQ Guru Pit Viper with its adapter for small kamado-style cookers. It fits like a charm and the FireBoard controller did a fantastic job of controlling temperature with the Pit Viper.

Audible Alarm and Alerts

The FireBoard 2 Drive unit does not have a physical alarm or beeper in it. Apparently, there is some sort of beeper in the Drive Cable, but they didn't include a beeper in the FireBoard 2 Drive controller. All alerts and notifications are done via App notifications on your phone, SMS text messages to your phone, and email. (You can go into the Account section of the App and configure a phone number to receive text alerts and an email address to receive email alerts.) Of course, in order to receive text and email alerts, you must first configure Wi-Fi. (We'll show you this a little later.) Alerts are created only for high and low temperatures on each of the 6 channels.

If an alert occurs, you will see notifications like these displayed on your phone:

App alert notification.

Text alert notification.

Email alert notification.

Configure SMS and Email: So, how do you configure alerts and notifications? The first thing you'll need to do is provide your email address and phone number to the App if you wish to get SMS messages and emails:

Step 1. From the Dashboard, tap on the "Settings" icon.

Step 2. On the Settings screen, tap on "Manage Account".

Step 3. On the Account screen, enter your phone number and email address.

Create Alerts: Next, to actually create an alert, you use the following procedure:

Step 1. From the Dashboard, tap on the channel that you wish to create an alert for.

Step 2. On the Channel Info screen, tap on "Add New Alert".

Step 3. This creates a blank alert. Tap on "Setup Alert".

Step 4. On the Alert screen, set Max and Min temperatures for the alert. Also, tap on the sliders for Email and SMS notifications, as desired.

Step 5. When done, tap on "Channel Info".

Step 6. Your alert is now created, so you can tap on "Back" to return to the Dashboard.

In addition to the Min and Max temperatures and notifications, there are a few more options you can set:

• Custom Start/Stop Time: You can create a time window during which the alert can trigger. Outside of this time window, the alert will not trigger.
• Minutes Buffer: Alert will not trigger unless the alert condition exists longer than this value. Default is 0.
• Minutes Repeat: Specifies how often alerts will repeat once alert conditions are triggered. Default is 30 minutes, minimum is 5 minutes, maximum is 1440 minutes.

We'll point out the somewhat annoying behavior that App, SMS and Email notifications must be turned on for every single alert you create. We can't imagine anyone wanting to customize their notifications down to this level and it would be ever so much more convenient to state your preference globally, or at least be given this option.

Good Neighbor Feature

You may remember that the original BBQ Guru Competitor had a "Good Neighbor Feature" which allowed you to disable the alarm so as not to disturb your neighbors. The FireBoard 2 Drive controller has no alarm/beeper, so no such feature is necessary.

Visible Blower Feature

If a blower is plugged into the unit, a small fan icon will be displayed in the lower right hand side of the display. The current output of the blower, expressed as a percentage is shown just below the fan icon. In the App, the blower status is shown at the top of the Dashboard screen:

Blower indication on controller screen circled in red.

Blower indication in the App circled in red.

This is useful for knowing what's going on in your cooker. If the pit temp is rising and the blower is off, you may have too much ambient air flowing through the cooker. If the pit temp is falling and the blower is running constantly, you are probably running out of charcoal:

Power Interruption Feature

The FireBoard 2 Drive controller has in internal battery, so there should be no power interruptions. If an external power supply is plugged in to the FireBoard 2 Drive and the power supply loses power, the only thing you might notice is that the "12V" icon on the right hand side of the display will go out.

Keep Warm/Ramp Mode Feature

Flame Boss calls it their "Keep Warm" feature. BBQ Guru calls it their Ramp Mode feature. Both are similar versions of the same concept. In BBQ Guru's Ramp Mode, the controller lowers the cooker temperature once the meat gets close to being done. As the meat temperature rises closer and closer to the target meat temperature, the controller continues to lower the cooker temperature. Ultimately, when the meat temperature reaches the target temperature, the cooker will also be at the meat target temperature. As a result, you can hold your meat at your target temperature as long as the cooker has fuel left to burn. The Flame Boss Keep Warm feature lowers the cooker temperature all at once to the a user-specified temperature once the meat hits its target temperature. This lets the cooker cool down as fast as it can until the cooker temperature is about equal to the meat temperature. No matter how it is implemented, the goal is to allow you to hold your meat at its final temperature should you not be available to immediately see to it.

The FireBoard 2 Drive does not have either version of this feature. You would have to use FireBoard's programming feature to write a program to do this.

Cold Smoking

The lowest temperature that the Fireboard 2 Drive controller can control your cooker is 100°F. While probably low enough for some cold smoking, the ability of the controller to actually control temperatures this low will depend on your cooker and how airtight it is.

Learning Your Cooker

The FireBoard unit uses a PID control mode. What's PID? This explanation comes to us from Wikipedia:

"The PID controller calculation (algorithm) involves three separate parameters, and is accordingly sometimes called three-term control: the proportional, the integral and derivative values, denoted P, I, and D. [...]these values can be interpreted in terms of time: P depends on the present error, I on the accumulation of past errors, and D is a prediction of future errors, based on current rate of change. The weighted sum of these three actions is used to adjust the process via a control element such as the position of a control valve or the power supply of a heating element."

The FireBoard 2 Drive lets you select from a number of PID algorithms in the App, however, you are highly advised to use the latest version of their algorithm as they are always seeking to improve it and eliminate any weaknesses in prior versions.

Open Lid Detect Feature

Open Lid Detect (OLD) is a feature where the controller detects the rapid drop in temperature caused by opening the lid. It stops the blower to prevent stoking the fire unnecessarily and then manages the rise in temperature after the lid is closed. The FireBoard's implementation of Open Lid Detect is called simply "Lid Detect". It does not intelligently monitor the rise in temperature after the lid is closed. In fact, it doesn't even detect when the lid is closed. It simply stops the blower from running for a fixed period of time set by the user.

Lid Detect can only be turned on in the FireBoard App, not on the unit itself. Here's how:

Step 1. Click on the little wrench near the Drive button.

Step 2. Turn on Lid Detect, then specify the Duration Minutes.

There is no alert generated to tell you when the unit has gone into Lid Detect mode. If you happen to be looking and happen to notice, there are some subtle indications on the controller display and on the App Dashboard:

Lid Detect indicator on the FireBoard display. Normally that icon is an up or down arrow.

Lid Detect indicator on the FireBoard App Dashboard. Normally it shows blower speed.

We'll show you how the FireBoard 2 Drive's Open Lid Detect feature performed later in the review.

Built In Timer

There is no built in timer function on the FireBoard 2 Drive or in the App.

Firmware Updates

From time to time, the firmware in your FireBoard 2 Drive may need to be updated. The controller checks for the availability of newer firmware levels when it connects to the FireBoard servers. If one is required, the unit will update its firmware automatically. Unfortunately, it is not possible to disable automatic firmware updates, so you should always turn on your FireBoard controller before you are ready to cook. If there is an update pending, the unit can update the firmware and be finished before you need the unit to control your cooker.

Drive Programs

The FireBoard 2 Drive controller has a unique feature we've never seen before, which is the ability to write programs to control the unit beyond simply setting a cooker target temperature. Why would you want to do this? A few uses for this that we have seen are:

• In order to implement a ramp mode or keep warm function in which the controller lowers the temperature of the cooker when it senses the meat has reached its final temperature.
• In order to exercise more control over the cooker during initial warmup to avoid overshoot. (We'll note, however, that we never found this to be necessary.)

You create programs by tapping on the "Programs" tab in the FireBoard App. Your program can contain multiple steps and there are four types of steps you can create:

• Time Step — The controller will maintain the specified temperature for the specified length of time. Example: Keep the cooker at 225° for two hours.

• Temperature Step — The controller will maintain the set point (pit temperature) until the temperature of the selected channel reaches a specified value. Example: Keep the cooker at 225° until channel 3 reaches 160°

• Time and Temperature Step — Specifies a set point temperature and a time value. The controller will maintain the pit temperature for a specified time period or until a specified channel reaches a specified temperature. Example: Keep the cooker at 225° until either channel 3 reaches 160° or 2 hours elapse, whichever occurs first.

• Hold Step — Holds the cooker temperature at a specified temperature. Example: Used at the end of a program to hold the cooker temperature indefinitely until you are ready to remove the food from the cooker.

Here are two examples, a time program and a temperature program:

Time Program

Temperature Program

From these screens you can:

• Give your program a name
• Add notes about the program
• Modify the steps
• Add steps
• Select which controller should execute the program
• Start the program
• Pause a program
• Manually move to a different step