the MUST HAVE accessory for Kamado Style Grills

The original FireBoard device, the FBX11, started off as a smart device that tracked temperatures. It was a simple enough device that did what it did well. A couple of years after the FBX11 was released, FireBoard Founder/CEO, Ted Conrad, was looking for a way to control the fire in his ceramic kamado smoker.

Fires throughout history have been controlled by air movement. Undoubtedly, early man discovered that by blowing on a fire, the fire got hotter. This led to the use of a blowpipe, basically a hollow reed or tube (think straw!) which allowed better control of the air in the exact right spot without getting so close as to light your hair on fire! At some point, the development of bellows came into existence. Using a mechanical “lung” prevented the use and thus limitations, of human lungs. It also ushered in early metallurgy by being able to smelt copper, bronze and iron. However, bellows still required human effort to operate.

As technology increased, the use of mechanical air pumps was developed. Early designs were driven by water power, but eventually steam power was found to be useful in providing air for the larger and larger furnaces required during the Industrial Revolution.

That brief history sidetrack proves the point:

If you control the air, you control the fire.

Knowing this, Ted hatched the idea to add fan control to the FireBoard system. If one could track temperature remotely, certainly you could track and even control a fan remotely as well. An accessory fan control cable was developed that plugged into an existing AUX port on the side of the FBX11. And with a 12 volt output on this cable, fan control was possible. And it worked extremely well, to the surprise of some of Ted’s colleagues!

And thus, FireBoard Drive was born!

The FBX11 has served well and many are still in service to this day. When it was time to develop a Next Gen model, the Drive control was integrated with a 12 volt power output into the FireBoard 2 Drive and FireBoard 2 Pro.

The beauty of the FireBoard 2 Drive and Drive Blower G3 is a set-and-forget setup for grills and smokers that have only manual control of airflow to adjust temperature. Rather than having to make incremental changes to the intake damper and the stack damper, the Drive system controls the heat by means of a connected temperature sensor and control logic running the attached fan. Simple in setup and configuration but far more complicated behind the scenes in the FireBoard firmware and software. And it all works. Well.

This system works so well that the FireBoard 2 Drive is the number one FireBoard 2 product. When the Drive Blower G3 and additional accessories are added, it’s labeled the FireBoard 2 Drive Bundle. And this bundle is far and away FireBoard’s best selling product overall. It’s the MUST HAVE accessory for Kamado style grill owners.