The secret is in the smoker. And the secret to the smoker is everything a group of 16 Harvard engineering students could do to turn the finicky art of smoking meat into a controlled, semiautomated science.

In prototype form, the smoker looks like a combination of a giant pepper mill, a tandoori oven, and V.I.N.CENT from The Black Hole. It weighs 300 pounds. It has a refueling chute built into the side of it. And it uses a proportional-integral-derivative controller, a Raspberry Pi, and fans to regulate its own temperature, automatically producing an ideal slow-and-low burn.

Temperature Control

Built-in, precise temp control is a key innovation with this smoker, which uses a Raspberry Pi, fans, algorithms, and what's called a PID controller. The heat rises gradually until the air temp at the meat's surface hits 225 degrees, and the fans kick in to maintain that temperature for hours.