PID Temperature Controller

This worked great for turning my analog electric smoker into a now digital electric smoker. I am very happy how it worked after I was done putting it together. If I had one thing to say about the directions, watch you tube videos on how to put everything together. I am very mechanically inclined and was very confused with the instructions that came with it. I thought the price was decent. The temperature was almost perfect. I will be trying it out on a pork shoulder this weekend. Shipment was also very fast.

Working well good buy using to run an electric smoker.

Awesome pid controller for my heat tempering oil. Perfect size Perfect price and good instructions. You cant go wrong with this ine

Wasn't anything fancy about it, but it was cheaper than anything else on the market. The set up was some what easy once I learned how to work one of these things and everything did what it's suppose to do. So for the price it's a good purchase.

Temp was off about 14 degrees out of the box. The instructions are cryptic to say the least. Wiring it up was straightforward, then I saw temp was off, so a quick look at the instructions says P13 is temp offset. OK, dig through instructions to find how to get to setup. In the flowchart it shows to hold SU (SV? can't read it) for 25 seconds. OK, got it. it turns to P00, you can then hit up/dn keys to scroll through settings, but ... P13 never comes up. P00 is data lock, the manual shows valid values are like 0,1,18, etc. but doesn't say which does what. If you buy one of these, 0 locks out most settings, 1 opens a couple, 18 opens more. So to set temp offset, hold the button for 25 seconds, when it changes to P00 set the value to 18, now you can get to P13 to put in a temperature offset. (it is concerning that the offset is this large, most of my other controllers are name brand and I've never needed this big of an offset) Also of note: I'm running a heater on this, 1800 watts, in a room with an ambient temp of 55F. The heatsink hit 110F !!! There seems to be quite a bit of internal resistance on these SSRs when there should be essentially none. Needing to de-rate an SSR based on load is a bit concerning, but, for a PID, tc, ssr and heatsink that costs about half of a single Opto22 SSR, I guess I can't complain. it seems to be doing the job. Only time will tell if the thing will last

Menu took a little while to figure out but once set up it works great. I put it on my cigar humidor as the electronics on it died. Temperature is rock solid on 70 degrees. It can be used for heating or cooling.

Note: this is a revised review. This controller was easy to wire up and install. It was also easy to enter and set a target temperature. But... the instructions for how to set parameters are dismal! The instructions show a picture of the controller and identify the keys. The only problem is that its for a different unit! See the attached photo from the manual and compare to the image of the unit on the advertisement. My unit, the A8-1, does not have an "info" key. Thus the operating panel explanation is not useful. I was unable to access the various P sub-menus despite pawing away at different key combinations. So, without correct and clear instructions on how to change the authority level I can not set things like what type of thermocouple we are using. Yes the instructions DO show how to do it, (assuming you can get past base authority P00) but when you try exactly as shown in the instructions, it does not work as they illustrate. Dreadful. I have been using PIDs for over 10 years. Willing to tolerate a little fussing around. This one is hands, down, the worst. Avoid. Buy a different product. Supplier needs to step up and provide proper instructions. I raised this from 2 stars to three stars because I contacted the seller and they did help me to get this abomination set the way I wanted. It took a couple of rounds but we did it. For those who may care: In order to change from the default P00 value, you have to press the set button a second time. Once with a long hold of ~ 3 seconds, and then a short press. You will then be able to use the arrow keys to enter a new value; I used 2, and this opened up entry into the other P values I needed, like thermocouple type and whether the device worked in PID mode or just an on/off switch at the target temperature. The instructions are so poorly written that I can not give this a higher rating, despite the device working.

Although the instructions were clearly no written by someone who was fluent in English, the device itself performed flawlessly and the kit was excellent.

Works well for me, just wiring circuit diagram given with it was little wrong.