Cooking Dinner From the Road

Roland Piquepaille writes "After 12 years of development and with the help of NASA's Embedded Web Technology software, the TMIO company is delivering its first smart ovens. You can monitor these refrigerator-ovens from any Internet connection. For example, you can adjust and control the oven settings from your cell phone and be sure that dinner is ready when you get home. But cooking from your office or your car won't come cheap: these ovens carry a price tag of $8,699. Right now, they're only available in North America, but I bet there soon will be distributors in other parts of the world. Read more for additional details about these smart ovens."

Comments

Thank you Roland for the Non-Story

[Lord Byron II]

First of all, it doesn't take NASA to make a web-enabled oven. Second, if you read to the end of the article, you'll see evidence that this article is actually two or three years old (I'm talking about the 2003 and 2004 awards). And third, who would really benefit from an oven like this? Ask yourself:

When was the last time you used your oven?
Are you willing to prepare a dish in the morning and put it in the oven before you leave for work?
Would you actually trust this thing not to burn down your house?

My point is this: cool idea, but hardly worthy of a front-page post.

It's a fridge too

[Zouden]

The article mentions the 'oven' has refridgeration capability - this means it can keep your uncooked food somewhat fresh while you're at work, and when you know you're going to be home soon you can instruct the device to switch into 'oven' mode.

Pretty clever, I think, although I almost never use the oven when I'm cooking dinner - it's all saucepans and frypans. How often do most people cook roasts?

I already have one

[portforward]

It's called a Crock pot. Ribs, soup, chili, stew, chicken, it beats other types of cooking hands down. Set it in the morning, it is done when I get home. The food doesn't get burnt. You can get one for less than $40. What is the upside of this oven?

Smart vs Accessible

[Andrew Tanenbaum]

These ovens don't seem very smart, just accessible. I would call them smart if they were able to cook food -- detecting when it's ready -- without any human intervention.

Re:Or

[JanneM]

you can safely leave that Stouffer's brand frozen pork chop and mashed potatoes in there for 10 or 12 hours

Actually, with the exception of a few ingredients, there is no problem with leaving chilled stuff out over the course of a day. And if they start out frozen, I doubt there's any danger with any food.

After all, if you want to thaw a chicken filet or a piece of salmon, that takes hours with it lying alone on a plate on the counter. If you have it lying together with other frozen ingredients in a container, I doubt it would have time to fully thaw before it's time to start cooking it. Even if it did, a few hours thawed won't harm it or you.

People are sometimes a little too afraid of food being spoiled, I think. It's not like it becomes a seething mass of microbes within ten seconds of not being "hygienically packaged" or anything.

To What Purpose?

[VonSkippy]

I live as hectic as life as anyone, but can see absolutely no purpose to this device. If I don't have time to cook, or can't wait to eat, I go to a restaurant. Otherwise, my cooking (like a nice dinner) is either planned in advance, or it's simple and done in a microwave. Even if they cost the same as a existing oven, who could possible find this device useful (and why)?

Automate the dryer to ironing to closet/dresser process, now that would be useful.

Cheaper option

[ozbird]

Once again, NASA comes up with the high cost, over-engineered solution to a simple problem...

1. Wrap food carefully, and completely, in foil.
2. Place food parcel carefully on engine block; secure with wire if necessary.
3. Drive home.

For the average commuter, your dinner is now cooked.

Did anyone else think Road Kill from the title?

[WoTG]

Heh... I thought that this was going to be story about either road kill meals or some sort of cooking in the engine compartment of a car. Too bad it wasn't, an $8000 dollar oven with a timer isn't much interest to me.

Re:I'm sorry but..

[dangitman]

There are fast food restaurants in nearly every country on earth. This is much less lazy than fast food - you still have to prepare your food. So, if you are correct, why are there fast food restaurants outside the US?

What could possibly be lazier than going to a "drive-thru" and buying a substance that doesn't even resemble food, and eating it in the car?

cheaper solution

[flogic42]

The better solution is to just buy food that only takes 5 minutes to cook. Seriously.

Burning Dinner from the Road

[bitspotter]

Is anybody else uncomfortable with the idea of buggy computers and insecure networks controlling the operations of appliances that are known to be fire hazards?

I'd much rather be home to monitor the operation of my cooking, frankly. Unless I can use one of those smellometer devices with my cell phone to tell whether or not something's burning. :)

The other irony is if we have all these mobile devices that make it unnecessary to be in the office, why wouldn't I just stay home with my oven in the first place?

Of course the reality is that for most people, mobile devices are actually excuses not to stay home.

Just get takeaway

[cheekyboy]

Man if you can afford $9000 for an oven, then why bother

Go out to a funky cafe/resteraunt, and spend that $16 on a well made pizza/pasta/stake and 3 beers.

No wonder it takes $500million to launch a shuttle.