Chef iQ

The Chef iQ integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] lets you read the temperatures from Chef iQ wireless cooking probes directly over Bluetooth Low Energy. No cloud account, base station, or hub is required: the probe broadcasts its readings and Home Assistant listens passively.

Supported devices

The following Chef iQ wireless probe is supported:

• Chef iQ Smart Wireless Meat Thermometer (CQ60)

The iQ Sense base station broadcasts under the same Bluetooth identifier, but it is a Wi-Fi appliance rather than a passive probe and is not supported by this integration.

Prerequisites

This integration requires a working Bluetooth setup, either a local Bluetooth adapter or an ESPHome Bluetooth proxy. The probe is battery-powered and only broadcasts while it is awake, so make sure it is awake (for example, by taking it off its charging dock) before adding it.

Configuration

To add the Chef iQ device to your Home Assistant instance, use this My button:

Supported functionality

The Chef iQ integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] provides the following entitiesAn entity represents a sensor, actor, or function in Home Assistant. Entities are used to monitor physical properties or to control other entities. An entity is usually part of a device or a service. [Learn more].

Sensors

A probe exposes the following sensors:

• Food temperature: the food (internal) temperature at the probe tip.
• Ambient temperature: the ambient (cooking environment) temperature.
• Probe tip 1 through 4 temperatures: the temperatures measured along the probe shaft (disabled by default).
• Battery: the probe battery percentage.
• SoC temperature: the temperature of the probe’s system-on-chip (SoC), its internal electronics (diagnostic, disabled by default).
• Signal strength: the Bluetooth signal strength (diagnostic, disabled by default).

Use cases

• Follow a long cook from anywhere in the house: put the food and ambient temperatures on a dashboard and let Home Assistant tell you when the roast reaches its target, instead of walking back to the grill or keeping your phone awake.
• Catch a dying fire or a runaway smoker: get a notification when the ambient temperature drifts out of the range you want, even when you are nowhere near the probe.
• Keep a record of your cooks: the temperature history shows how the food and the cooking environment progressed, which helps to repeat a good cook or fix a bad one.
• Know when to charge: get a reminder when the probe battery runs low, so it is ready for the next cook.

Examples

The entity IDs below belong to a probe named CQ60 079A; replace them with the ones of your probe. The thresholds are in °C. If your Home Assistant uses °F, the sensors report °F as well, so use 145 for the roast and 212 to 275 for the smoker range. The notifications go to a phone running the Home Assistant Companion app through its notify.mobile_app_<device> action; replace notify.mobile_app_phone with the action for your phone. If your destination is a notify entity instead, use the notify.send_message action with that entity as its target, since the action alone does not pick a destination.

Automation: Notify when the food is done

Waiting next to the grill is no fun. Send a notification when the food core temperature reaches the target, 63 °C for a roast in this example.

• Trigger: Numeric state
  • Entity: Food temperature (sensor.cq60_079a_food_temperature)
  • Above: 63
• Action: Notifications: Send a notification via mobile_app_phone (notify.mobile_app_phone)
  • Message: Roast is at {% raw %}{{ states('sensor.cq60_079a_food_temperature') }}{% endraw %}°. Time to take it out.

alias: "Roast is done"
triggers:
  - trigger: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.cq60_079a_food_temperature
    above: 63
actions:
  - action: notify.mobile_app_phone
    data:
      message: >
        Roast is at {{ states('sensor.cq60_079a_food_temperature') }}°.
        Time to take it out.

Automation: Warn when the smoker drifts out of range

A fire that dies down or runs away ruins a long cook. Send a notification when the ambient temperature stays below or above your smoking range for five minutes.

• Trigger: Numeric state
  • Entity: Ambient temperature (sensor.cq60_079a_ambient_temperature)
  • Below: 100
  • For: 5 minutes
• Trigger: Numeric state
  • Entity: Ambient temperature (sensor.cq60_079a_ambient_temperature)
  • Above: 135
  • For: 5 minutes
• Action: Notifications: Send a notification via mobile_app_phone (notify.mobile_app_phone)
  • Message: The smoker is out of range. Check the fire.

alias: "Smoker temperature out of range"
triggers:
  - trigger: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.cq60_079a_ambient_temperature
    below: 100
    for: "00:05:00"
  - trigger: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.cq60_079a_ambient_temperature
    above: 135
    for: "00:05:00"
actions:
  - action: notify.mobile_app_phone
    data:
      message: "The smoker is out of range. Check the fire."

Automation: Remind yourself to charge the probe

A flat probe on cook day is annoying. Send a notification when the battery drops below 20%.

• Trigger: Numeric state
  • Entity: Battery (sensor.cq60_079a_battery)
  • Below: 20
• Action: Notifications: Send a notification via mobile_app_phone (notify.mobile_app_phone)
  • Message: The meat probe battery is below 20%. Put it back on its dock.

alias: "Charge the meat probe"
triggers:
  - trigger: numeric_state
    entity_id: sensor.cq60_079a_battery
    below: 20
actions:
  - action: notify.mobile_app_phone
    data:
      message: >
        The meat probe battery is below 20%. Put it back on its dock.

Data updates

The integration is passive: it never polls or connects to the probe. Entities update whenever Home Assistant receives one of the probe’s Bluetooth advertisements, which the probe broadcasts while it is awake. The battery level and SoC temperature are sent in a separate advertisement from the cooking temperatures (food, ambient, and probe tip), so they may appear a few seconds later after setup. When the probe stops broadcasting, for example once it is docked and asleep, no new readings arrive until it is seen again.

Known limitations

The integration is passive and read-only. It reports the probe’s broadcast readings, but cannot start cooks, set target temperatures, or change probe settings. Those features require the Chef iQ app.

Troubleshooting

If the device is not discovered, try the following:

1. Make sure that the probe is awake and broadcasting (take it off its dock).
2. Make sure your Bluetooth adapter or proxy is in range of the probe.
3. Make sure the Bluetooth integration is set up and working.

Removing the integration

This integration follows standard integration removal. No extra steps are required.

To remove an integration instance from Home Assistant

1. Go to Settings > Devices & services and select the integration card.
2. Next to the entry you want to remove, select the three dots menu. Then, select Delete.
   • Depending on the integration, the entries are listed under one of the following headings:
     • Devices
     • Hubs
     • Services
     • Integration entries
3. To confirm, select Delete.
   • Home Assistant also deletes the devices and entities of the entry.
4. If Home Assistant asks you to restart, restart Home Assistant.
5. If Home Assistant asks whether to also delete the application credentials, select Remove or Keep.
   • If you keep them, Home Assistant uses them automatically when you add the integration again.
   • To delete them later, refer to Deleting application credentials.