Pellet Grill | Richárd Barabási

An acquaintance of mine had a pellet grill he has bought in the USA. As the electric grit runs on 110V there, it would not work in Hungary. He asked me to replace the electronics with 220V compatible parts.

The control board looked like the one on the left (image from Wikipedia) and the final design with housing (right).

Uppon inspecting I found that it was a simple desing other than it used high-voltage AC of witch I had no experience with. The replacement of the motors was simple but the control circuit was a bit tricky. I inspected the original control board and took inspiration from it when designing the new one.

I prototyped quickly a perf-board circuit with a simple 3D printed box and after successful testing went to make a proper PCB and a decent housing for it.

The proto circuit (left) and the first proper PCB (right).

Of course the AC has some requirements that I didn’t think about even after a few years working with digital circuits. The first PCB blew up at the moment I connected it to mains. After I figured out the problem I made a new PCB, tested it and it, and still found some minor issues. Fortunately they could be fixed with some external wiring. After testing it and making sure it works I installed it in the grill.

The final PCB with the fixes and the housing in the background.

Testing if the electronics can start the fire as intended.

Client said that it is being used regularly and it works as intended.