Temperature chart offline

nautiboy

Member
Messages
19
Grill(s) owned
  1. Bull
So far, every single one of my cooks that has gone past about 1.5-2 hours ends up with the temperature chart saying it's offline and doesn't show me anything. It works fine up until that point, and even though it says it's offline, all of the control and monitoring functions work correctly. I'm able to control the temperature, it continues to update the probe and internal temps, etc. Everything is fine except the temp chart.

My wifi is much better than your average setup. I have 7 access points all home-run (not meshed) placed and coordinated to ensure quality signal in all locations around my house and yard. The AP that the Bull connects to is about 20' away, line of sight with the only thing in-between being the 2x6's of the deck. The AP reports a top-quality connection with the Bull. I have separate SSIDs for my 2G and my 5G networks, so there's no chance of it getting confused and trying to switch. Theoretically it might try to roam from one AP to another, since there's another AP with a fairly good signal in that location, but I've checked the logs (on the network controller) and don't see any evidence of it roaming away from its primary AP. I have a 1Gbps symmetric fiber connection for my internet, with an instant failover connection to a 150/30Mbps cable modem. Which is all a long-winded way of saying I have a pretty solid network.

It's really frustrating to be following along on my cook, using it to keep track of how long I've been cooking at a particular temperature and noting the temp drops so I know when I went to check and/or flip stuff. Then all of a sudden, that whole history is gone and the temperature chart remains "offline" until I power down the grill and power it back up.

It almost seems that if it loses one temperature update, the whole thing just stops working. Or maybe it tries to maintain an open connection, and if it gets interrupted for any reason it doesn't re-establish and erases the history? I dunno - just guessing.

I suspect this is a long shot, but any ideas on what can be done about this? I'll probably end up contacting customer support, but I wanted to see if there were any ideas/info before going to support.
 
I've had this happen too. I exchanged a couple emails with Rec-Tec support on this issue and it seems related to a memory/buffer capacity issue, maybe. With my new RT-590 I've done 2 long cooks and both times lost data at some point after the 8 hr mark. The first time my units were per minute. But for the second cook, I reduced the unit rate to every 10 min, but still lost data sometime between 8 and 12 hr. If it was just buffer capacity I would have thought a 10-fold reduction in data density would prevent the loss. Now I think it's related to time. FWIW - I think my home network is quite robust (Google Mesh) with great coverage and the wifi connection to the Rec-Tec use super robust. The lowest density rate is every 15 min which I'll try next. If recommend trying that first to see if that'll preserve your temp history > 12 hr. And let Rec-Tec know, maybe a firmware update will improve the data handling (and allow exporting).
 
I've had this happen too. I exchanged a couple emails with Rec-Tec support on this issue and it seems related to a memory/buffer capacity issue, maybe. With my new RT-590 I've done 2 long cooks and both times lost data at some point after the 8 hr mark. The first time my units were per minute. But for the second cook, I reduced the unit rate to every 10 min, but still lost data sometime between 8 and 12 hr. If it was just buffer capacity I would have thought a 10-fold reduction in data density would prevent the loss. Now I think it's related to time. FWIW - I think my home network is quite robust (Google Mesh) with great coverage and the wifi connection to the Rec-Tec use super robust. The lowest density rate is every 15 min which I'll try next. If recommend trying that first to see if that'll preserve your temp history > 12 hr. And let Rec-Tec know, maybe a firmware update will improve the data handling (and allow exporting).

I would actually have assumed that setting update rate should have no impact on their buffering/storage. Since you can change the resolution at any time and it shows that resolution from the beginning of the cook, I would assume changing that only changes how the data is viewed, not how it's stored.
 
So far, every single one of my cooks that has gone past about 1.5-2 hours ends up with the temperature chart saying it's offline and doesn't show me anything. It works fine up until that point, and even though it says it's offline, all of the control and monitoring functions work correctly. I'm able to control the temperature, it continues to update the probe and internal temps, etc. Everything is fine except the temp chart.

My wifi is much better than your average setup. I have 7 access points all home-run (not meshed) placed and coordinated to ensure quality signal in all locations around my house and yard. The AP that the Bull connects to is about 20' away, line of sight with the only thing in-between being the 2x6's of the deck. The AP reports a top-quality connection with the Bull. I have separate SSIDs for my 2G and my 5G networks, so there's no chance of it getting confused and trying to switch. Theoretically it might try to roam from one AP to another, since there's another AP with a fairly good signal in that location, but I've checked the logs (on the network controller) and don't see any evidence of it roaming away from its primary AP. I have a 1Gbps symmetric fiber connection for my internet, with an instant failover connection to a 150/30Mbps cable modem. Which is all a long-winded way of saying I have a pretty solid network.

It's really frustrating to be following along on my cook, using it to keep track of how long I've been cooking at a particular temperature and noting the temp drops so I know when I went to check and/or flip stuff. Then all of a sudden, that whole history is gone and the temperature chart remains "offline" until I power down the grill and power it back up.

It almost seems that if it loses one temperature update, the whole thing just stops working. Or maybe it tries to maintain an open connection, and if it gets interrupted for any reason it doesn't re-establish and erases the history? I dunno - just guessing.

I suspect this is a long shot, but any ideas on what can be done about this? I'll probably end up contacting customer support, but I wanted to see if there were any ideas/info before going to support.
Yea the temp charting has been very iffy especially on the longer cooks, but sometimes messing around with the unit settings gets them to work again, don't really care as it's not something I really use much. It would be nice if these controllers could receive updates and new firmware over Wi-Fi but this is is not able on the Rec Tec controllers, hardware must be replaced to have this happen, I'm confused why they did this except for $$ it might have cost but many other Wi-Fi grills out there now this can be updated over Wi-Fi. Rec Tec updates the app occasionally but not necessarily for the better.
 
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Thanks guys. I just found another thread which seems to indicate that changing the unit settings can "recover" it even after it starts showing offline. My previous search didn't come up with it, possibly because I think I only searched this (rt-700) forum and the other thread is in the lounge.

I'll have to give it a try next time.

But that's a bit sad that the controllers cannot be updated. I just assumed they could - that's pretty much the standard for just about every device, even cheapy $30 wifi plug controllers can update their firmware. That seems like quite an oversight.
 
Thanks guys. I just found another thread which seems to indicate that changing the unit settings can "recover" it even after it starts showing offline. My previous search didn't come up with it, possibly because I think I only searched this (rt-700) forum and the other thread is in the lounge.

I'll have to give it a try next time.

But that's a bit sad that the controllers cannot be updated. I just assumed they could - that's pretty much the standard for just about every device, even cheapy $30 wifi plug controllers can update their firmware. That seems like quite an oversight.
I've been able to reprogram vehicles ECM's for over 25 plus years. Rec Tec definitely missed this, even a USB port would have been great but I can also see the issues they would have with the not tech savvy trying to perform this.
 
FWIW, yesterday I had the offline issue again. I changed the time resolution settings and it came back. Slightly annoying I have to do that, but at least it's an easy work-around!
 

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