English Man Spends 11 Hours Trying To Make Cup of Tea With Wi-Fi Kettle (theguardian.com)

All data specialist Mark Rittman wanted was a cup of tea from his all new Wi-Fi kettle. Little did he know that the thing would take 11 hours for that. The issue, in the case of Rittman was, that the base station was not able to communicate with the kettle itself. According to The Guardian: A key problem seemed to be that Rittman's kettle didn't come with software that would easily allow integration with other devices in his home, including Amazon Echo, which, like Apple's Siri, allows users to tell connected smart devices what to do. So Rittman was trying to build the integration functionality himself. Then, after 11 hours, a breakthrough: the kettle started responding to voice control.

Comments

The worst part

[Shane_Optima]

The worst part was the liquid it ended up producing was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

Re:The worst part

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's not the worst part. The worst part is his kettle is now completely pwned and mining bit coins for ISIS.

Re:The worst part

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the final tweet of his in the article.

Well the kettle is back online and responding to voice control, but now we're eating dinner in dark while lights download a firmware update

This should be the only response ever given when someone tries to sell IoT nonsense.

Re:The worst part

[Overzeetop]

It's rare to have a first post that can effectively be the last post. Today is the day you win the internet.

Re:The worst part

[tomhath]

the kettle started responding to voice control.

And the kettle responded by calling the pot black.

More accurate headline?

[rhazz]

Man buys IoT kettle that doesn't have support for Amazon Echo, spends 11 hours coding support, puts lame spin on story because nobody cares.

Re:More accurate headline?

[geek]

I kinda care. Its interesting to see the hacks people do to make things work. Granted this isn't as cool as making an iMac into a fish tank but still, kinda neat.

Re:More accurate headline?

[CODiNE]

You must have very thin fish.

RFC2324 compliant?

[eMilkshake]

Does it correctly implement RFC2324 and respond 418 I'm a teapot when asked to brew coffee?

Re:RFC2324 compliant?

[vel-ex-tech]

I'd expect it to implement RFC7168. Perhaps he just sent a BREW request for / and didn't inspect the Alternates header on the response.

What. The. Fuck.

[jenningsthecat]

Seriously? I'm not sure what has me more gobsmacked - the fact that somebody would make a WiFi kettle, or the fact that anybody would actually BUY the fucking thing and burn 11 hours of his life trying to make it work. "Yes, I willingly wasted 11 hours of time, plus however much time I had to work to pay for it, on a kettle, just so I could connect it to the Interwebs! Isn't that cool?"

Soon we'll be hearing stories about people being DDOS'd and spammed by their own appliances, and I will laugh heartily.

Never ask a hobbyist why

[Anonymous Coward]

The inevitable question asked IoT tinkerers is : what's the point? Was it worth it? After three weeks of tinkering, and an ugly mess of arduinos, breadboards and wires, Now you can hit the snooze button on your analog clock with wifi, or now you can run ssh on a teletype machine. Why did you do it?

The answer is usually : to see if I could.

And I say God bless those nutters.

Re:Never ask a hobbyist why

[green1]

Well of course it is! Manufacturers discovered a long time ago, that even their cheapest quality stuff lasts too long and people don't buy new ones often enough. By internet enabling them, they can conveniently discontinue the server side support (which usually blocks all local functions as well) any time they need a new revenue boost and force people to buy new ones all over again.

Wrong tool for the job

[Tablizer]

Shouldda got a Galaxy Note 7. Heats up shit quick.