I am new to smoking, my Pit Boss 700S is my first smoker. As far as I understand, the super low temperatures are what makes smoke, as the pellets barely burn, but mostly smolder.
If this understanding is correct, that would mean that whenever we are over some low temperature ... (225?) then it is much more difficult to get smoke. So the way to get smoke is to wait for a drop, dump pellets, and get smoke as they smolder before they catch fire, start burning, and add a bunch of heat to the system. PID controllers would make this worse, since they are not going to get low temperatures.
Here are some ways around this that I can think of, where our goals are steady temperatures and smoke.
1. external smoke source. I've seen people use tubes, snake boxes, whatever.
2. second burn box. Let's call it s smolder box. Maybe a second augur, maybe a door that flips and sends pellets to the smolder box and to the temperature box.
That's all I can think of right now.