How Combustion's Wireless Works (MeatNet™)Updated 2 days ago

Your thermometer talks to your Display, your phone, and your Booster over Bluetooth, using a self-organising network we call MeatNet. You never have to set it up, and this page explains why.

There is no pairing

Most wireless gadgets make you pair, sign in, and configure before anything works, then make you do it again every time the connection drops.

Combustion tools skip all of that. Your thermometer simply broadcasts its temperature data in the open, and anything nearby that speaks MeatNet picks it up. No pairing, no account needed for local cooking, no handshake to repeat when something reconnects.

(Fair warning: a nosy neighbour with the app could, in theory, discover when your pork chops will be ready. There is no such thing as extra pork chops.)

Why Bluetooth and not WiFi

Bluetooth Low Energy uses very little power, and that is the whole reason. The battery inside a Predictive Thermometer is necessarily tiny. Put a WiFi transmitter in there, and it would run for minutes rather than days.

Bluetooth sits at around 2.45 GHz, which is the band consumer devices are allowed to use. It is a busy neighbourhood: most WiFi shares it, and so, at vastly higher power, do microwave ovens. A 700-watt microwave is about 35,000 times more powerful than a Bluetooth radio.

Being a small radio in a crowded band means the same behaviour you already know from your phone and your home WiFi. There will be spots in your house where reception is poor.

MeatNet is a mesh that builds itself

MeatNet is an ad-hoc mesh network: it forms itself, needs no router or access point, and requires nothing from you.

• All the data starts inside the Predictive Thermometer
• The thermometer broadcasts it openly over Bluetooth
• Tools with a repeater function (Display, Booster, Giant Grill Gauge) rebroadcast exactly what they received
• Any app or tool in range of any MeatNet device shows the data

Every Combustion tool works with every other Combustion tool, and devices talk to each other directly rather than through a hub. Breaking one connection does not interrupt a cook or reset anything.

It works in both directions

Instructions travel back the same way. Set a target temperature on the app or the Display, and the network passes it to the right thermometer, which has its own unique ID. The thermometer adjusts, then broadcasts the updated information back out. Every device and app in range updates to match.

Why a dropped signal is not a lost cook

Three things make this reliable:

• The thermometer does its own thinking. All calculations happen onboard, so it never depends on staying connected to anything.
• It logs everything as it goes. Data is recorded in onboard memory at five-second intervals.
• It catches up automatically. Walk out of range, reboot your phone mid-cook, lose signal in a metal smoker: when the connection returns, the app or Display fills in everything it missed, live. There is no reconnection ritual.

We are still bound by physics, and you will occasionally lose signal. The difference is that it costs you nothing when you do.

We also transmit at relatively high power using a current Bluetooth 5 radio, and the antennas in the thermometer and Display are designed close to the theoretical limit of efficiency for their size.

What about "Coded PHY" or Bluetooth Long Range?

Coded PHY, also called Bluetooth Long Range, changes the radio signal at a physical level to trade data rate for distance. In principle, it can extend Bluetooth range dramatically.

All Combustion tools use BLE 5.4 and are Coded PHY capable, so the hardware is ready. The limiting factor is the phone at the other end, since both ends have to support it. Some competitors market this heavily, but it only helps once your phone can use it.

You do not need to do anything either way. If your device supports it, the benefit is there. If not, your Combustion gear is ready for when it does.

Still have a question?

If something about the wireless side is not behaving as described here, email [email protected] and tell us which tools you have and where you are cooking.

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