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Cooking Up the Connected Kitchen
Esther Schindler writes "If you're looking for technology to improve kitchen connectivity and home automation, you might be surprised at how little is available today. Turns out, that's a good thing. Our industry has a long history of trying to sell a solution in search of a problem. Maybe we can get away with that occasionally, when the solution is inherently fun, or when there are enough of us geeks to buy an cool-looking automated gizmo with blinking lights where a cheaper hand-held "solution" is just as good for the masses. But when it comes to home appliances, which cost a pretty penny by anyone's measure, nobody wants to invest big bucks in a "connected" device — however cool the home automation seems — where the technology platform goes away (my washing machine is 8 years old; I sure wouldn't use a PC or phone that age) or where the benefits are murky. That is, just what is it we want the kitchen automation to do? It's one thing to say, "The fridge could order food when I run out" but none of us want to scan every potato as we unload the groceries. Yet, as I wrote in Cooking up the connected kitchen, the manufacturers are paying attention to home automation and connectivity and giving your oven an app. And some of it, as I hope the article makes clear, is really cool. 'The manufacturers want to sell us technology, and we want to buy cool capabilities that actually improve the quality of our lives. What I found surprising, in my own hands-on evaluations, is how often I had a dual-stage response: "That's the dumbest thing I ever saw. (beat) Wait, I want that!"' The manufacturers are being thoughtful about both what we'd want and what we'd buy... which is something to appreciate. So what would you want from kitchen connectivity?"
Connectivity is great but I want automation. I want to be able to wake up to a couple perfectly fried eggs and some bacon next to buttered toast. Thanks science.
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I want feedback.
I want to be able to stick a thermometer in my food, whether in the oven, microwave or on the hob and have the thing use feedback to follow a temperature vs. time profile.
Why waste $5k on immersion heaters and vacuum packers for sous vide setups when a simple thermometer input and a few lines of code could achieve the same thing on a conventional kitchen oven?
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There are good remote thermometers. Combine one with a microwave oven so that it scans your food, and dials back the power if hot spots occur, and stops cooking when a predetermined temperature reached.
Plus, a pot stirring robot. Just put a spoon in the robot's hand, grab the arm and show it how to stir the pot. Then tell it to repeat the action. Bonus points if the spoon has a thermometer in it to alert you to your pudding boiling.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
The one thing I can think of that would be useful is a shopping list- scan a bar code when you use up an item, have it synch to the cloud, and be able to see the list on your phone when you shop.
You haven't thought that idea through. Or read TFS. Yes, it would useful when generating a shopping list. But no, it's not very useful when you have to scan every item as you unpack your purchases.
As is it, you can very easily do this now, with current technology. There are USB bar code scanners. There is software for inventories. In fact, I'm guessing you (and most of the /. audience) have all the hardware and software for this application now--on your smart phone. There are many bar code readers that use a cell phone camera as a scanner.
So why don't you do this? Why don't you scan the bar code of every item in your kitchen to create an inventory. And scan every item as you use it. (For most items, you'd want to trigger the item to appear on your shopping list before you run out.) And scan every item as you unpack after shopping?
There's no (technological) reason you couldn't do this today. You don't because it's a huge pain in the butt.
This probably has something to do with enjoying cooking, so for me there's very little incentive to automate more than we already do. I mean, we have gadgets to:
- chop just about anything quickly
- slice just about anything quickly
- peel vegetables
- open cans really easily
- time absolutely everything
- clean the dishes afterwords
- turn the oven on while you're not even in the house so that the casserole will be finished just as you're getting home
What's left that isn't better handled by people?
I am officially gone from
How are they doing to use tech to improve:
Knives
Pans
Gas Burners
Meat Grinder
Food Processor (I like to pulse by hand and stop when MY eye says it is done to my liking
Piston Sausage Stuffer
Stand Mixer
Vitamix Blender (ok, on this one I got the model with the extra programmed modes, and find I only use those to clean the thing with after using it)
Breville Ikon Juicer (how will it know what food I'm putting in next in order to adjust the speeds?)
Charcoal Grills
Offset hardwood smoker
I mean seriously, if you like to cook and have the right tools for things, it is almost pretty much manual work by definition. Will I somehow resort to the cloud when I want to cut a whole chicken quickly into 8 pieces?
And for the often mentioned refrigerator or pantry that will know when to order food or an item when it gets low...how is it going to know what I'm cooking that week that I'll need that? I mean sure there are SOME staples, but I tend to look weekly at the grocery store ads, see what's on sale (usually also meaning what's in season), and I plan my menus and cooking plans accordingly, based on those ingredients. This keeps me eating more things in season, and hence, US and more local products that are fresher, and I don't get stuck in a rut cooking the same things all the time, and saving a few bucks along the way while eating well and healthy.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE tech and gadgets, but I just can't see how it would improve the kitchen. Quality knives and cookware make the kitchen...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It occurs to me that I don't use the food I have that efficiently. If I want to cook a specific recipe, I go out and get those ingredients. Sometimes I have leftover ingredients. Sometimes I wind up with random things I can't think of how to use until they go bad and I throw them away.
So a useful feature in my kitchen would be an engine that would know what ingredients I have and how much, and what yummy recipes I could make with them that night. Even better, have that engine suggest recipes based on my likes & dislikes the way that Pandora or Spotify or Netflix recommend new songs or movies based on your preferences. For bonus points, have the engine be able to figure out how to re-use the leftover pork ribs from two nights ago into a new and different recipe (that is not soup :-)
If not us, who? If not now, when?
Philips had a concept called Microbial Kitchen a while back which included lights powered by methane as well as a stove that burns methane generated by composting kitchen waste. Devising appliances that cleave to that closed loop philosophy would be great.
If not us, who? If not now, when?
In the spirit of less is more (but still gadgety): How about instead of a fridge that needs to have inventory scanned in and out just like a grocery store, one with a couple of wide angle cameras inside which you could activate from your smart phone while you're at the grocery store?
I do my research from my recipe database, which is synced to my phone. Usually this is while having lunch out somewhere.
It would be more efficient to do this research at home, where the supplies are. Because no sensor, outside of many-$K models, will tell you if this or that cheese is still edible. It's not just it's not moldy yet - you also need to consider if it is dry like a rock. (Dental implants cost more than a new bar of cheese.)
Cameras will not peer through the glass of bottles with herbs and will not tell you how much is remaining. It is a challenge to measure the remaining volume even if you are in business of making sensors for huge tanks full of stuff. Making a sensor that is cheap enough to be disposable is not possible with the current technology and the current wallet of an average customer.
And no, I won't re-buy smoked paprika and white pepper when I use them up, "just in case" I make a recipe that requires them again in the next year.
I see. You are unwilling to spend $3 on a bottle of pepper that is always usable and lasts forever, but you are ready to spend hundreds of dollars on technology that will not last more than a few years and will not be sufficiently reliable from day zero.
Large warehouses do maintain incremental inventory records by integrating input and output. But periodically they have to close the doors of the warehouse and to count everything, to reset the calculations. You can do the same - keep track of additions and expenses, and from time to time you open the cabinets up and physically check how much sugar is in this box, how much vegetable oil is in that bottle, and so on. I cannot think of a technology that would report all that while being so cheap that you can afford it. Food is too numerous in kind and too variable in state, shape, color, smell and every other parameter.
If I had room to space things out, pan and zoom cameras would be awesome.
Perhaps you need a fisheye camera and a LED light source inside the cabinet (or the refrigerator.) If you want it, why to deny yourself this toy - go ahead and build it! I do such things all the time (the WAF in this house is unbounded.)