Hey Joule Team, please bring back low temp or circulation mode

Hey Joule team,

I came back from an 8 day cruise and started using my Joule again today, in the past, it would let me select a low temp, like 40F. Today it stated I must choose a temp higher than 68F

I use the low temp mode to use the Joule for circulation, cooling drinks, soups, creme brulee, removing the ability to go below 68F means it would warm up my ice bath!

Can you bring back low temps or add a circulation mode so I could continue to use the Joule for low temp circulation! Thanks!

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Comments

fisher23

To the best of my knowledge Joule has never been able to circulate below 68°F. I was a beta user and have had multiple Joules ever since. Other circulators can but not Joule. If you previously set your Joule at 40° it must of been 40°C not 40°F.

aaron.m.kent

I would love this feature as well.

meyer8863

As would I. It seems like such an easy addition, I'm surprised it isn't there already a feature. I'm starting to wonder if they chose a thermometer that sacrificed a wide range of readings (0 C to 100 C) for an accurate (down to the 0.1 of a degree) reading within the average range of SV cooking temperatures. Not the end of the world obviously... just curious of the reasoning.

tshewman

see @John Fisher's response. To the best of my knowledge, Joule has never been able to cool water cooler than room temp (specs list a heater, not a cooler). I suspect the 40C that John mentioned is likely more accurate.

tshewman

To be able to cool water cooler than room temp there would have to be a cooling element in addition to the existing heating element that is there. Not so easy I suspect.

brian_martin2001

While I could be, and often am, wrong, i believe @Michael_Meyer_123524 means not a cooling capability, but just the ability to set the temperature below the actual temperature of the water. This would allow the Joule to function just as a water circulator. The same thing could be achieved with an aquarium pump. The Anova does have a similar feature where you can set the temperature very low. This will not cool the water, but will keep the water circulating, without affecting the water temperature.

swrotella

Nowhere in the post is there an ask for Joule to cool the water. The ask is to either enable a circulation mode or to set a low temp so that it does not heat the water.

danminor0

I would really like this as well, just a setting for pump only. I do a fair bit of chicken breast that I freeze in marinades and they really don't like being heated in the bag at all really. They get an unpleasant mushy texture. It would be nice to put it in some cold circulating water and come back in an hour. Yes there are other ways, but the joule is a very user friendly package.

Steve_Dunham_145440

Over bluetooth, the Joule firmware will accept a temperature of 0.1 C (but not 0 C), so the limitation is in the app. Of course, it doesn't have the hardware to actually cool water.

So, fun experiment: I just finished cooking a rib steak that I want to eat another day. I set my joule to 0.1C and ran it with the steak, some cold water, and ice. The joule is now circulating and reporting 3.9 C. My Thermopen says 39 F (I don't know how to get it to do Celsius). Joule is flashing amber, probably because the water temp is above the set point. (I didn't have enough ice to bring it down to zero.)

fisher23

That is very interesting, I will have to experiment.

Duane_311356

I would love this as well. It can be done with the Anova and is very handy for circulation in an ice bath. Circulating the warmer water (near your subject) allowing it to chill faster. It's great for beverages. I've seen cool whirlpools in wine shops to this end. You can chill a bottle of white in just a few minutes.

Kevin_Debelak_636231

How do you connect over bluetooth and bypass the app?

Steve_Dunham_145440

TLDR - I wrote my own app.

The rest of this is technical. If you're a software engineer, it might be useful. Honestly though, their app or the facebook thinger is the best bet unless you're just curious about how things work.

So, the motivation was that I wanted to make sure I could talk to the device if anything ever happened to chefsteps and their app was a bit slow to start up. But mostly it was fun to poke around a bit and a good learning experience (I'd never done bluetooth before).

I intended to eventually embed it in my personal recipe app, but I've got a day job and way too many side projects. (A few years ago, I implemented Douglas Baldwin's sous vide model in javascript, learning a little about PDEs in the process, but I haven't gotten around to adding that to my recipe app either.)

The Joule app contains a base.proto file describing the protocol buffer schema used over bluetooth and wifi. If you capture the websocket connection going through chefsteps (mitmproxy), you can watch it in action. You'd also see the secret key in the communications with the server, you'd need that later. (I think you could get that yourself if you ran through the pairing protocol, but I haven't bothered figuring that out - I've got a good guess though.)

Scan for a device with service "700B4321-9836-4383-A2B2-31A9098D1473" and then write raw instances of StreamMessage to the write characteristic "700B4322-9836-4383-A2B2-31A9098D1473". (I got to learn a little bit about bluetooth in the process. On iOS there are a bunch of delegates and about four async steps to get to the characteristic.)

Once you find the device and write characteristic, you need to send a "SubmitKeyRequest" with secretKey equal to your secret key. That will unlock everything else.

Then they send a "Ping" message. Probably not necessary, but I do it anyway to double check that things work.

They also send a "BeginLiveFeed" message, which starts the joule posting values back at you about its current state (they'll be DescribeFeedReply messages). But you need to send a KeepAlive back to the joule regularly or it'll decide you've gone away and stop. I randomly chose a 5 second interval.

To program joule, send a StartProgramRequest with your desired settings. Try not to void your warranty or burn down your house, though.

Michael_Peterson_1410980

I’ve use my Anova for defrosting by setting the temperature very low. Would love to use the joule in the same way. Simply disabling the heater for this use case would be great.