Fire is primal. So is the meat.
There is a specific Zen required to read a kettle or kamado. You adjust vents, feed embers, guess at oxygen levels, and hope your brisket doesn’t dry out before dinner. It’s work. Hard, inconsistent, unforgiving work.
Why do that when an app could do it for you?
I stopped trying to be a barbecue monk months ago. Instead, I stuck probes in ribs, grabbed a beer, and let a phone tell me when dinner was ready. The meat came out better anyway.
A new wave of aftermarket tech turns almost any grill into a smart device. No, you don’t need a $2,000 pellet cooker. You can use your phone to modulate airflow via a small fan at the bottom vent. The result is consistent temperature control. Basically, your backyard grill behaves like an indoor oven.
“It’s almost like I have no excuse for bad meat.”
That’s the terrifying thought we had when the WIRED testing crew put these gadgets to the test. If you want perfect steaks, you’ll need to get tech-savvy.
The Logic: Buy Dumb. Make It Smart.
Complicated things break.
That’s the problem with high-end smart grills out of the box. They are beautiful $1,500+ machines with built-in sensors and apps. But if the app dies or the server goes down, your expensive grill becomes a heavy, dumb metal box. Look at “Lifetime” grills. Apps get discontinued. Legacy tech fails.
Stick to legacy hardware. Brands like Weber, Traeger, or Recteq have survived for decades because their physical design works regardless of software.
The better strategy is to treat your grill like an old Honda Civic. Keep the chassis. Swap the engine. Install aftermarket tech that you can upgrade independently. If the controller dies in five years, buy a new one. Don’t replace the whole grill.
Big Green Egg and Weber have their own solutions. Third parties like ChefsTemp and Spider Grills fill the gaps. The underlying tech is simple: probes for meat and air, plus a fan for airflow control.
Is it as precise as you’d like? No.
Is it better than eyeballing vents while drinking beer? Absolutely.
Upgrade the Weber Kettle: Spider Venom
The Weber Kettle ($149). Iconic. Ubiquitous. Indestructible.
If you own an American backyard, you likely have one. Or you’ve seen a neighbor’s. It’s simple. It works. It’s boring.
Enter the Spider Grills Venom ($280).
Designed specifically for 22” and 26” Kettles, the Venom is arguably the best digital controller available for aftermarket install. It uses PID technology. For those outside the tech world, this means it predicts temperature changes moment-to-moment. It doesn’t swing wildly from freezing to burning. It responds.
Installation takes ten minutes. Slide the device onto the bottom vent. Plug in the probes. Pair via the app.
It connects to 2.4GHz Wi-Fi only. This sucks if your house router is inside three brick walls. It works fine with a phone hotspot, unless you wander away from the grill. Range matters here. Plan for a mesh system if your Wi-Fi coverage is spotty.
Here’s the operation.
Set your target temp in the app. It tells you where to position the top manual vent. The Venom fan then handles the bottom airflow to stabilize heat.
At low temps for slow cooks, it’s eerily accurate. I tried searing steak at 475°F. It overshot by 25 degrees. It eventually stabilized. The steak seared perfectly.
The point stands: You set the temp. The grill maintains it.
You can leave the grill. Go mow the lawn. Check the app later. The probe tells you the internal meat temp. It alerts you when the target is reached. It does not tell you when to flip. That part remains up to you.
One catch.
It needs power. You can buy a battery pack ($50 extra). Or drag an extension cord. I dragged a cord.
Upgrade Ceramic Grills: ChefsTemp ProTemp
Ceramic grills—Kamado Joe, Big Green Egg—are beasts.
They build heat slowly. They hold it forever. I am terrible with them. I constantly overheat my Kamado Joe because I underestimate its thermal mass. The ribs turn to jerky before I know what hit them.
The ChefsTemp ProTemp S1 system saves me from myself.
It’s modular. A bit fragmented, but effective.
- ProTemp S1 Hub : Screws into the existing thermometer slot on your grill.
- Breezo Fan : Attaches to the bottom vent with a metal adapter.
- Wireless Probes : For meat and air temps.
- Your Phone : To coordinate it all.
The app is smart. Really smart.
Enter your meat cut and thickness. The algorithm calculates doneness times and even suggests when to flip. I tested an inch-thick rib eye at 350°F. The results were shockingly good.
The downside is the friction of setup.
Unlike the Venom’s all-in-one hub, the ProTemp relies on four separate components communicating with each other via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
If your signal dips, the chain breaks. Switching from Wi-Fi to Bluetooth isn’t smooth. You often have to unpair and re-pair the whole setup.
Drilling might be required depending on your specific ceramic grill model. It’s not the cleanest install. But it works for nearly any kamado brand—Primo, Old Country Smoker, Vision.
When I screwed up the temperature manually on the Joe, the ProTemp app alerted me instantly. I adjusted vents, saved the ribs. That is its superpower: reaction.
For The Skeptics: Weber Connect
Scott Gilbertson hates “smart” tech.
He’s a line cook by trade. He prefers manual control. No apps. No wires where they don’t need to be. He uses the same Weber Kettle he bought years ago.
He makes one concession: The Weber Connect Smart Hub.
There are no fans here. No automatic adjustments. It is a digital thermometer.
- Four slots for wired probes.
- An LED readout mounted to the grill handle.
- Optional Bluetooth app pairing for alerts.
He sets a temperature. The grill sits. If the temp drops, the app pings him.
“Cooking is part science and part art. I favor art. But I like being warned when the science fails.”
This is for people who want awareness, not automation. It adds high utility with almost zero risk of failure. Because it’s wired, signal strength is irrelevant. It won’t drop out of Wi-Fi because the dog ran between the router and the sensor.
For novices, the recipes in the Smart Connect app provide structure. For veterans, the temperature alerts provide insurance.
It is simple. It is durable.
The Big Green Egg Native Option: Egg Genius
Big Green Egg invented the American kamado boom.
They turn barbecue into convection baking. Ceramic retains heat better than metal. The air circulation inside creates a self-basting environment.
Originally, these beasts were dumb. Just vents and coals.
Enter Egg Genius.
While this article focused heavily on the Venom and ProTemp, BGE offers a dedicated ecosystem. It pairs specifically with their hardware. The interface is robust, often preferred by hardline egg-heads over the ChefsTemp system due to proprietary integration.
If you own an Egg, buying into the Genius system ensures longevity. It avoids the adapter-hell of generic aftermarket installs.
But let’s circle back to the core issue.
Why complicate life with probes, fans, and apps?
Because we are obsessed with precision. We treat fire like data now. We want to control the chaos of cooking by imposing logic onto combustion.
Is the data perfect?
The Venom overshot the steak temp. The ChefsTemp required signal management. The hub added wires to Scott’s pristine grill.
We introduce new points of failure to avoid old ones.
Maybe the technology will eventually vanish, absorbed into the grills themselves. Until then, you have to choose: buy dumb hardware and patch it, or buy smart hardware and pray the support lasts.
Either way, the steak comes out medium-rare. The ribs don’t dry out.
The only loss is the illusion that you’re really a pitmaster. You’re just an app user with good taste.
