Broil King Smoker - Home Assistant integration

A fully local Home Assistant integration for a Broil King iQue pellet smoker (Mongoose OS firmware, ESP32). It talks to the grill directly over your LAN via its JSON-RPC-over-WebSocket API - no cloud, no app, no AWS tokens. Reverse engineered from the firmware's own init.js and the official app.

Tested hardware / disclaimer

This integration was developed and tested against one grill only: a Broil King Regal Pellet 500 Pro Smoker (2024 model) running the Broil_King iQue firmware. It will most likely work on other iQue-based Broil King pellet grills that expose the same local RPC API, but that is untested - temperature ranges, command codes, or reported fields may differ on other models.

Use at your own risk: this integration can change your grill's setpoint and mode. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Broil King / Onward Manufacturing.

Install (HACS)

1. HACS -> Integrations -> three-dot menu -> Custom repositories -> add this repo, category Integration.
2. Install Broil King Smoker, restart Home Assistant.
3. Settings -> Devices & Services -> Add Integration -> "Broil King Smoker".
4. Enter the smoker's IP address (a device password is only needed if you set one in the iQue app).

Or copy custom_components/broilking/ into your HA config/custom_components/ manually and restart.

Entities

One "Broil King Smoker" device with:

• climate.broil_king_smoker - current grill temp, settable target temperature, on/off, and preset modes Smoke / Cook / High.
• sensor - Meat Probe 1 & 2 (and their targets, disabled by default), Cook Time, Preset Mode, Cook Timer Remaining.
• binary_sensor - Running, Low Fuel (pellet warning).
• number.broil_king_smoker_cook_timer - cook timer in minutes. Setting it arms the grill's own timer; 0 clears it.

Cook timer

Two-way. Writing the Cook Timer number sends the timer to the control board (action 6), and the grill echoes the configured duration back in alarm_Hour_Set / alarm_Minute_Set, so a timer set on the grill's own panel or in the iQue app shows up in Home Assistant too. The board runs the countdown itself and reports what is left in alarm_Hour / alarm_Minute, which is the Cook Timer Remaining sensor - HA does not keep its own clock.

Temperatures are shown in your HA unit; internally the grill always uses Fahrenheit and the integration converts.

Dashboards & alarms

Optional, copy-paste recipes built on these entities live in examples/: a settable meat-probe alarm and a low-pellet alarm (Home Assistant package), plus a ready-made Lovelace dashboard.

The protocol (decoded)

• Transport: WebSocket ws://<grill-ip>/rpc, JSON-RPC, no authentication on the LAN.

• Custom methods reply asynchronously: the result is inside response.error.message as a double-encoded JSON string, and error.code == 0 means success.

• GetCurrentTemperatures requires {"reply":"full"}.

• Units: raw values are always Fahrenheit; convert with (raw-32)*5/9. A probe reading of 0 = unplugged.

• Control frames go via SendGenericCommand {"command":"...","pass":"..."}, each byte as "DDD " (zero-padded 3 decimal digits + space), without the checksum (firmware appends it). commType byte 00. UART frame: E1 E1 | len(2) | 00 | func(2) | body | checksum.

  action	frame (pre-checksum)	meaning
  0	E1 E1 00 09 00 30 02 vv	power off
  1	E1 E1 00 0A 00 30 05 hi lo	grill setpoint, degrees F (16-bit)
  2	E1 E1 00 0A 00 30 06 hi lo	probe 1 target F
  3	E1 E1 00 0A 00 30 09 hi lo	probe 2 target F
  4	E1 E1 00 09 00 30 03 vv	display unit
  5	E1 E1 00 09 00 30 07 vv	mode 0=Off 1=Smoke 2=Cook 3=High
  6	E1 E1 00 0A 00 30 0A hh mm	timer
  7	E1 E1 00 09 00 30 0B vv	backlight

Security note

The grill's local RPC is unauthenticated: anyone on the LAN can read its config (incl. the WiFi password) and download its AWS IoT private key via FS.Get. Keep it on a trusted / IoT VLAN.