Electric Barbecue Pit

I don't know if this is the appropriate place for this or not, so I apologize if it isn't.

I'm in the process of building my electric brewery. I also like to barbecue. I've been thinking about putting a heating element in the fire box on my smoker and controlling it with my brewery control panel. It would make an 8 hour brisket smoke so much easier!

I would like to know if anyone has done this, and if so, can you give me any pointers? Maybe post some pictures, or guide me in a good direction to do some research?

Here's my smoker, and control panel.

I would have put this in the meat smoking and curing subforum, but I've definitely had the same idea. I'm planning on wiring up my smoker in the next month or two. I think I'll use a much simpler control panel though. I might get another one of those ebay aquarium temp controllers, but I need to find myself a good probe that will work in those temps, as I doubt they intended the little rubberized plastic one it comes with for med/high heat.

I'm guessing the chickens need to be in the smoker to get the final product......

I'll stick around for some coherent answers too since I hope to do an electric UDS one of these days too.

If you were to converge The Electric Brewery, The Alton Brown Flower Pot Smoker, and your existing equipment, I am sure that in the middle (somewhere) would be the answer.

I hooked up an analog temp controller to a 1500watt hot plate and put an R2D2 smoker on top. I used a cast iron pan to hold the wood chips, that sat on the hot plate. I'm a real amateur when it comes to smoking meat, but I did some pork butts and several ribs pork and beef. It held the temp very consistant for 10+ hr smokings, it was a pain though reloading wood chips, that might be some thing to think about automating too.