These are all real-world problems that don't require software/hardware looking for a problem. I'm disappointed when I see the novelty approach taken to to solving problems of cooking. I thought this was already achieved with the microwave?
Instead what I would really like to see is a way to determine if food is going off, contaminated and where it comes from. This kind of food-tech would rock!
The website claims a pretty fast pre-heat time of just under 5 minutes, which is probably mostly attributable to the compact size -- a smaller volume can be heated faster. I didn't notice anything about how the heating element works ongoing, though, so it's unclear whether that's just the time to heat the volume of air, or if the walls and ceiling are kicking off enough radiation to sustain cooking at that point. I'd assume the latter, given the price tag.
- use less energy?
I would expect this oven to use less energy than a traditional home oven, since they advertise consistent heating and good insulation, both of which tend to be lacking in most home kitchens. Again, the small volume will be an energy saver as well.
- have simple ergonomic controls?
They claim that it'll recognize the food when you put it in, and prepare it to your requested style based on their computer vision and machine learning algorithms.
"They claim that it'll recognize the food when you put it in, and prepare it to your requested style based on their computer vision and machine learning algorithms."
Speed & energy, maybe. Simple, no. Computer + Oven = Computer. [0] The potential for cognitive friction is high for Homo Sapiens.
[0] A play on the Alan Cooper question: "Q. What do you get when you cross a computer with a (Foo)? A. Computer" -- Inmates running the Asylum, pp 3-14.
In comparison to a toaster oven though, a lot of the non-smart functionality is moot. Even a middling toaster oven should offer a lot of the same savings/convenience, and a top-of-the-line one is a tenth of the MSRP (e.g. http://www.brevilleusa.com/the-smart-oven-pro.html).
There's a market developing here within the "temperature controlled smart cooking" world, with the number of different engineering approaches growing rapidly. Y Combinator alone has funded three companies in this space already!
Pantelligent (YC W13) - $199 - https://www.pantelligent.com/ - smart frying pan plus smartphone app. Recipes are smart software & give you instructions to adjust on the fly to provide perfect results every time. Works for any dish you can cook in a frying pan (steak, salmon, eggs, veggies, ...).
Cinder (YC W15) - $499 - https://cindercooks.com/ - electric grill style countertop appliance with smart recipes on smartphone.
June Oven - $2995 / $1495 pre-order - https://juneoven.com/ - countertop electric oven style
Consumers have a wide range of options and that's pretty amazing, because fundamentally, the technology (temperature controlled cooking) works great and it's something I believe a lot of people are going to want to have in their home. It's like "process control 101" -- time and temperature -- finally made it to the kitchen.
(Disclosure: I'm an engineer & co-founder of Pantelligent. Words can not convey just how delicious a Pantelligent-cooked salmon or steak is. Paul Graham said, "This pan made the best salmon I've ever cooked. In fact, better than I've had in almost any restaurant." If you're skeptical, check out some of our hands-on reviews; we were recently on NBC TODAY Show, CBS This Morning, and Popular Science's "Top 10 Inventions of 2015". And if you're still skeptical and live in the SF Bay Area, email visit @ pantelligent.com and we'll see if we can schedule a visit to our Sunnyvale warehouse so you can try it out for yourself!)
With the exception of the immersion circulator, I don't understand these devices. Can you help me understand?
I'm an experienced cook, so (again, with the exception of the immersion circulator) I'm not in the target market for these devices. I'm having trouble understanding the target market though. I was thinking that it was for inexperienced people who want to cook at home. When I play that scenario through my head, it doesn't completely work.
Take your salmon example: getting the pan to a good temperature and cooking the fish to the ideal temperature is not easy, so I can see how an inexperienced person could easily benefit from real-time temperature feedback. What I'm having trouble figuring out though, is that after gaining experience from cooking fish a few times, what's the benefit of the real-time temperature feedback? I guess the thing I'm wrestling with is that as one becomes more experienced, the value of these smart devices seems to rapidly diminish.
I don't intend this to be negative or harsh, so I hope it doesn't come across that way. I'm genuinely interested in the thinking behind this smart device trend. Hope you can share.
I'm exactly the target market for this. I never learned how to cook meat growing up (I got by with sandwiches and salads and the like), but now as an adult I find myself in situations like the following:
Last week my significant other and I decided to cook dinner together (for a change; usually we don't). We were both interested in salmon, but neither of us knew how to cook it, so we ended up doing something else.
My status quo options are: (1) don't cook salmon, (2) cook salmon and most likely screw it up—hardly the best way to start an evening together, or (3) take cooking classes.
An appliance that unlocks option (4) cook salmon and have it most likely turn out delicious on the first try? Yes. I will eagerly pay money for that.
Even assuming over time I no longer need the device, the reality is that I'd much rather pay this one-time upfront cost than expend a bunch of time trying and failing or taking classes in order to develop a skill I'm not passionate about.
> My status quo options are: (1) don't cook salmon, (2) cook salmon and most likely screw it up—hardly the best way to start an evening together, or (3) take cooking classes.
If you have even basic cooking skills outside of salmon, you've missed several options, like "look up recipes/directions for preparing and cooking salmon" (going to cooking classes is more extreme than is necessary.)
And an appliance isn't going to make you not have to do that, because while the actual application of heat is an important part of turning salmon (or anything else) into quality food (ignoring raw preparations), so is preparation, and the appliance isn't going to do that for you. And if you can look up and follow prep instructions, you can probably look up instructions that include both prep and cooking, as most recipes do.
Why is getting it right on the first try the only acceptable outcome? If you try, fail a few times, and eventually learn it will still be dramatically cheaper than buying any of these machines. And once you learn it will become a transferable skill -- you won't be tied to only being able to prepare your food when you're home with your specialized device.
So much this. The fear of failure in cooking is a bit like the fear of failure in maths ("I'm just bad at maths") or fearing technology ("I'd never be good at computers!").
I do get it. It feels extremely wasteful to throw out a ruined meal. Many people are taught from very young that the stove is 'dangerous' and that hot pans are something to be feared. It's potentially really really embarrassing to ruin a meal for guests, etc.
It's a fear of experimentation though, which is a shame.
FWIW I'm a kitchen gadget nut as much as the next person - this could be a really good tool for convenience, not criticizing it at all in that way.
On the other hand, there's nothing cooler than having friends over for dinner and being able to say "yeah, I've never tried making this before, but it turned out great". Fortune favours the bold.
Have you considered option (5) look up salmon recipes and follow the directions? There are lots of sites online dedicated to hosting recipes. Some of them have decent video and pictures so you can see what they're doing. Here's a salmon recipe I tried just last week: http://www.marthastewart.com/1033633/roasted-salmon-kale-and....
If you plan ahead and are willing to spend a few dollars you could also get a cookbook. I'd recommend How to Cook Everything and America's Test Kitchen Cooking School Cookbook. How to Cook Everything has lots of recipes and does a good job explaining cooking terms. The America's Test Kitchen book explains the reasons for why they do things a certain way and also lists common problems and their causes so you can avoid them or correct them without guesswork in the future.
A struggle I had cooking was that so many of the recipes are pretty lousy, most distressingly including no pictures.
One of the things I really like about Blue Apron and Plated are how easy to follow their instructions are and the inclusion of 7 pictures (6 steps plus the finished dish).
I haven't tried Blue Apron or Plated but looking at those links the thing that appeals most to me is that it explains the timing. I tend to have trouble getting everything finished at about the same time without something being overcooked.
Try a cookbook like Bittman's How to Cook Everything Fast. Practical recipes+instructions on when to prep/cook/prepare other parts of a meal. There's also a couple chapters in the beginning that go over basic kitchen skills and what to stock in your home (oils, herbs, equipment) which can be useful.
Cooking For Engineers (http://www.cookingforengineers.com/) used to be one of my big favorites in that planning aspect but I haven't seen an update in years, sadly.
My current favorite place to get recipes/cooking knowledge - but requires basic cooking skills in the first place - is anything from Kenji from Serious Eats. Usually all my questions and thoughts will be addressed in some of the super-in-depth guides, like the sous vide steak one and the chocolate chip cookie one. http://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab
TBH I'd YouTube something like this - bet there is at least 1000 videos of cooking salmon. Or look it up in a recipe book.
If you get a device aren't you going to look up how to use it? Well you could just look up how to use a frying pan or grill.
>I'd much rather pay this one-time upfront cost than expend a bunch of time trying and failing or taking classes in order to develop a skill I'm not passionate about //
Fair enough: to my mind the hardest part of cooking a meal is ensuring everything is ready at the right time and fresh and hot for serving. None of these devices appear to help with that(?). Want some boiled potatoes with that salmon then you're going to have to learn how long they take and synchronise the cooking, unless they have a saucepan version that links with the other one to boil your spuds.
> bet there is at least 1000 videos of cooking salmon
That's the problem. And another reason why I like Plated and Blue Apron which narrow the noise dramatically (both offer both video how-tos and easy-to-follow recipes).
But you won't learn anything this way. Buy a copy of The Joy of Cooking, get some decent non-stick pots and pansresist the temptation to turn the heat up too high and practice. Yes, you'll have a bunch of failed meals along the way and you'll feel incompetent when that happens and you have to throw the food out and get take-out instead. This is OK.
Honestly, it's not that hard. You probably have a friend who can cook, get them to teach you some stuff.
Try Blue Apron for a week. Without a "smart" pan, you'll probably be able to get pretty good results just following the easy-to-follow recipe. I'm not sure how valuable the "better" results are going to be.
The thing is, "pretty good results" are competing against any number of eateries where we can get "delicious." Cooking together is fun, but scrapping or choking down a failed meal is not.
I've screwed up easy recipes plenty of times in the past. The promise that I can get a good result despite my lack of skill is what's appealing.
I'm overdue in writing a blog post entitled, "Blue Apron saved my marriage." Before Blue Apron I couldn't cook but Blue Apron definitely does a really good job walking you through things. You won't nail it every time but you'll definitely be close, you'll learn, and there is a good community of people making the same meal who can give you tips.
It's been a revelation for my family. I went from reluctantly heating up stir-fry to eat on the couch to enthusiastically preparing fresh food, sit-down family dinners.
The point that there's an instacommunity because you're all making the same recipe together is pretty awesome. Maybe broadcasting isn't dead? (See: Beats 1.)
Yes, and they've made great use of (Facebook) commenting so that you both get input/tips by other amateurs cooking same dish and Blue Apron gets fantastic, organic-ish exposure.
I agree that option 4 would explain the attraction of these devices. I guess I remain unconvinced that, while these gadgets may claim to "unlock option 4", they will actually deliver (yet again, excepting the immersion circulator). There's a lot more to cooking than simply getting the temperature right. I'm skeptical that a magic cooking gadget is going to make someone a half-decent cook for the same reason that I don't believe a magic golf club will make me a golfer: the reason I can't hit a golf ball is because my technique is pitiful.
Like I said, I'm not the target for stuff like this, but I am always on the lookout for neat gifts, which is why I'm trying to figure this stuff out.
You've downplayed option 3, but you've clearly got some motivation towards cooking. If I might suggest, have you considered watching/participating in a free cooking demonstration at the supermarket? In the past I've found them to be well done, and they use stuff available at the supermarket, so that lowers one barrier. Also, cooking classes make for a great date night.
Heat up a pan with, put oil/butter (or combi) in it. You want to test the right temperature? A breadcrumb should sizzle/produce little bubbles when thrown into the oil/butter. Butter should just start to be become brown and not bubble anymore. Put the Salmon into the hot pan, bake 2-3 minutes on each side, turn the heat down a little. It is easy to just cut one of the salmon pieces to check if the inside is done, it should seem like it is just not raw anymore. I often take the Salmon out of the pan after the short baking and eithr put it the oven (160degC for 5-10 min) or wrap it in aluminum foil and leave in on the hot induction plate where the pan was first for 5-10 min.
Now that I'm writing this, I have to laugh, one has to keep more in mind than I thought at first :) Most of it is intuitive to me now I realize.
I have to say that I only truly got comfortable with cooking (that is, doing it fast and having everything ready at the same time) after being unemployed for 8 months and doing all the cooking (the comfortableness took less than those 8 months). Having a nice kitchen with the desk at the proper height (and a dishwasher to prevent frustrations afterwards ;)) also helps tremendously.
So, as I set out to answer how simple it is... maybe it is not. But only practice will help and experimentation is fun. Why can't you just laugh and learn from a messed up meal? I started out cooking the way I did analytical chemistry (I have a degree in biochemistry), this prevents errors in the beginning but later on you will drop the precision in favor of your own preferences.
By now I can cook up nice meals in 15-30 minutes using mostly fresh things. And I like doing it. It especially feels good if your kids eat your meals. Perhaps having kids was the biggest motivation to try to vary as much as possible with fresh foods. And skipping a meal is less bad than it sounds ;)
(4) look things up on the Internet. From Youtube to various cooking TV series and blogs, you'd be hard pressed NOT to find a decent salmon cooking tutorial.
It all really depends on whether you want to learn how to cook salmon or if you just want it come out tasty on the first try. Smart-pan is as much of an educational tool as RockBand is a guitar playing tutorial.
What people want are results now. It took me a few tries to cook any fish well. Every once in a while I screw up and I chalk it to lessons learned.
The first time I made scallops I was nervous but I knew my gas range and I knew my tools, so it came out perfect (with butter though I should have made herbed butter). The first time I made buttermilk fried chicken using my sous vide they came out tender and seasoned, granted it didn't look all that pretty.
Cooking takes time. It takes practice. I think the novelty of these devices wear off once people realize that their steaks are perfectly medium rare but cheaped out or they don't know how to buy a good cut of meat. The novelty will go away when they practice cooking so much they rely less on technology and more on their own skill.
I see this as two camps. One is helping people cook and get comfortable and have fun with that, and the other is based on the new food science of temperature. This is most commonly known today as sous vide and implemented with an immersion circulator. The food quality really is 10x better, for example you can keep meat proteins below the temperature they seize up and push out moisture, and the experience is something you can't go back to normal cooking from. Because the food doesn't overcook* you have an hour of flexibility, if you love cooking you can use this to try more complex sides and time it right. If you're busy, you can stay calm when your spouse is 30 minutes late. It's like when the DVR came around and you could pause live TV, and no one could go back. Cinder takes advantage of precision temperature cooking to let you do these things, and unlocks other kinds of unattended cooking. You can set onions to a caramelization temperature and walk away, yes you could replicate that yourself if you wanted to hover and stir for 30 minutes, but this is like delegating to a sous chef.
*This is a slight simplification. Food will break down and turn mushy, but nearly everything has an expanded range for being done. Which means ending the tyranny of the clock.
Ideally we could also control the cooktop and at least on older electrical models it should be possible to hook into the circuitry that the knobs are attached to. Without automatic feedback loops such devices are less convenient but still enable better understanding and communication and prevent mistakes. In the salmon example, you might perfect cooking your fish, invite a couple of friends and suddenly fail because you learned to regulate the power output for a single serving, not for a more crowded pan and don't know how to adjust because you don't even know the temperature profile of your perfect fish. Of course one can learn to cook by sound, smell, heat, touch sight and taste and I value poetic recipes but that does not diminish the value of temperature controlled gear.
We watch cooks country sometimes. I frequently wonder how to change the recipe for our high altitude desert climate that differs from theirs. I'm never quite sure I've done it because the recipe's (especially volume based measurements) and descriptions are less precise than a smart gadget could be. I'm never quite sure the carbonara sauce is cooked or raw. This is why I'm interested, and perhaps part of the market. Cooking for me is about replicating conditions and duplicating an experiment.
If you let a device cook for you every time, you're not going to learn anything, so the device's value proposition is safe. I've been taking cars to the mechanic for 15 years and haven't learned a thing about cars while doing so, even though I could have been.
Meld is certainly interesting; manufacturing is going to be a challenge for them with a lot of moving parts, but in any case, it may work for some soups/stews types of dishes, but it won't be compatible with most of Pantelligent recipes (asparagus, eggs, crepes, pancakes, bacon). And a Meld-style internal temperature probe alone would be significantly worse than Pantelligent for foods like steak and salmon; I know that at first glance it seems like internal temperature is the temperature to measure and optimize for, but you also have to control the external/surface temperature or else it's "unobservable" and will lead to either undercooked or overcooked meats! You can not simply do feedback around the internal temperature. (That's one of the key engineering insights of Pantelligent.)
I don't see how you can possibly just do feedback on the external temperature. How could you possibly guess if the meat is cooked through just based on the surface temperature? You really can't unless you make some assumptions on initial temperature and thickness at minimum.
You are correct. Initial internal temperature and geometry of the food are key inputs. Once you know these, simulation is possible, but it takes some work.
A few years ago I wrote an app called Sous Vide Dash that was initially targeted at professional level kitchens-and later white labeled by PolyScience, the leading provider of professional sous vide equipment. We did full thermodynamic simulation in that app, and modeled both temperature and pasteurization. To my knowledge it's still the only cooking app that has an embedded numerical solver for partial differential equations. In 2012 we won the StarChefs International Chefs Congress Innovator award for our work.
Popping back to the top of the stack, it's a very exciting time for precision cooking. As one of the founders of Meld, I can tell you there is a lot more to come.
This is one reason we chose the form factor that we did for Cinder, because we can automatically measure thickness. We found that's something rather hard for people to do, no one really wants to hold up raw meat to a ruler app on their phone, and yet is crucial to time estimation. Then we ask you what we don't know, so in the app you'd say: Chicken breast. We've also done some cool things to know when it's done, like how a rice cooker clicks off.
I'm a software engineer and I took a total of two cooking courses and with lots of practice, I became a better cook.
$1500 is essentially a weekend cooking class...twice. Learning to cook was by far the most challenging yet the most fun I've ever had. With the exception of the immersion circulator (I own a Polyscience one), none of these things really help. If you want to be a good cook, learn to cook. I never understood the need for "smart" devices when cooking is largely based on experience. Sure, this oven will help me cook medium rare steaks well, but will it taste good? I make medium rare steaks on a frying pan and I can make it consistently well. Cooking is practice, it doesn't require some expensive device.
Big market out there for kitchen gadgets. Most of which don't really help that mucb, but are flashy. A kitchen full of gadgets is more of a vanity thing than anything else.
I see no reason to not believe you. You should at least consider that others might differ. Those others might be a small niche big enough to be worth milions.
What is the coating of that pan? It looks like some non-stick thing, which I won't allow in my kitchen. Either cast iron (which this device would never survive my seasoning process), or 18/10 | 18/12 stainless steel.
Because of the very real health risks, and the fact that generally, Teflon coated and aluminum cookware is of very low quality (no matter the price level, there's some really expensive Teflon stuff out there that is useless, clearly not made by someone who cooks).
I won't use ceramics either as there is no guarantee they won't leech dangerous chemicals.
The only thing I've seen that is suitable for long term use is cast iron, high carbon steel, and some 304 stainless steel variant (18/10, 18/12, etc). Its the only things we've been using for a decades on modern processes that are not known to leech anything dangerous (unless its extremely low grade Chinese stuff that isn't up to spec, which is easy to avoid).
Serious question: have you ever done any blind taste tests? I'm sure your device produces excellent results but I have my doubts about whether it provides any real advantage over someone who knows how to cook.
The key here is that precision, low-temperature cooking allows you to cook more tender and juicy food. Above 140F or so, proteins tend to seize up and drive moisture out. If you haven't tried this kind of cooking, I'd highly recommend seeking out a restaurant that uses sous-vide and trying some. It's so good that I co-founded a company (Cinder) to adopt it for home, mass use.
Not to say that a taste test wouldn't be interesting, but "someone who knows how to cook" is not something that everyone has access to. The intersection of that demographic and one wealthy enough to buy a new $3000 appliance, well, we'll see.
I attended a demo for Frima VarioCooking Center and have since been looking for a temperature-sensing pan for induction cookers (if that is possible). I understand why all those devices are marketed as "smart" but what I'd really like to see is dumb devices that are just sensors and actuators. I hope you also cater to hackers!
I think you could make a lot of money branching out into reflow oven land. Provide degrees C and controlled ramp up and ramp down rates. Time lapse video of the solder reflowing. Twitter integration "Hey I just reflowed a SMD PCB"
Clearly you can make more profit off an individual reflow oven than an individual glorified toaster oven. Although you can sell more toaster ovens than reflow ovens. Well, probably. HOWEVER the insightful part is the reflow oven model is the same hardware with a different software load and probably a custom sticker that says something like "never for use with food after interior is contaminated" or similar. There may be some OSHA or FCC/EMI recert issues to sell a reflow oven (semi-)commercially instead of as a home toaster oven, but its probably pretty small potato costs.
There are, of course, competitors in the world of toaster oven sized SMD reflow ovens. But this is a nice looking oven. However "The suggested MSRP for the June Intelligent Oven is $2,995" and even in reflow oven land thats kinda steep.
Also talk to a metal worker who does powder coating. Another "converted toaster oven" job with peculiar temp control and ventilation issues. Again, you're a simple new software load on the same old hardware away from a new product in a new market. I believe powder coating would be pretty rough on the optics and the glass door, but it might work anyway if the user is careful.
I suspect your hardware can't handle it but a desktop kiln for ceramics or enameling artwork is an interesting idea.
Finally how good is your low temp control, could you "air sous vide" or just provide a stable environment for rising bread? low temp stability is harder than you'd think, probably. You may already be able to do this, it just didn't make the cut to the website.
Usually I downvote or ignore snarky comments on HN as the site tries to keep things on topic and somewhat constructive, but I have to admit I had a good laugh at this.
I have one of these, it doesn't run very warm at all (yes, I recognize that was a snarky comment). I was wondering the same thing, but am thinking that it could be part of the food recognition engine.
Still seems like overkill, though. Just like the "beverage identification" in Vessyl, it presumably adds a reasonable amount to the cost of the thing (as well as another breakable component) when selecting "A chicken leg" in an app or something would be sufficient.
The camera also appears to be used to help determine when the food is done, to allow the oven to do things like turn itself up for the last 15 minutes to crisp the exterior.
And that's the important part. Nobody's going to pay $1500 for something that makes cooking easier. They'll appreciate it, but they won't pay for it. Lot's of people will pay $1500 for a gadget that makes cooking better.
$1500 is a lot for an oven that can't cook very much food. It looks like it would serve two people, max? And it can only cook one thing at a time so wave goodbye to roasting veggies while the meat cooks.
People who are passionate about cooking tend to do it for more people than just themselves.
> $1500 is a lot for an oven that can't cook very much food. It looks like it would serve two people, max?
It handles baking dishes up to 11"x16".
Most family size single-baking-dish recipes are sized for a 9"x13" baking dish.
> And it can only cook one thing at a time so wave goodbye to roasting veggies while the meat cooks.
While I suppose for some people a countertop oven might replace a full-size oven, most of the target early-adopter market for expensive kitchen gadgets is going to have a decent size kitchen with a full-size oven as well as any countertop oven; the features this has might reverse the traditional "large oven is primary, countertop is secondary" arrangement in those households, but I don't think most people in the early adopter market is going to be using this as their sole oven (though, I suppose, if you were particularly price-insensitive, especially if you already had a cooktop separate from a large oven, getting two of these for a dual-oven setup would be more space efficient than most dual-oven setups.)
> It fits a 12 pound turkey. That's a small turkey, but it'll feed a lot more than 2 people.
And, for those who find a turkey a less-than-stellar example for whatever reason, a 12-pound turkey is a lot larger than a roughly four-pound roast, which (with various different marinades and preparation techiques) is the base for lots of ~6-8 serving main course recipes.
> $1500 is still a lot of money in the kitchen space. Most people could buy a whole new set of appliances for that price.
So? The target market of early adopters for high-end kitchen gadgets are willing to pay pretty high premiums for unique features. (And aren't people who could replace their existing set of appliances for $1500; they're more like the people that spend close to half of that on a high-end VitaMix blender alone.)
What? No. An upper-midrange oven alone costs that much. $1500 only gets you a set of the cheapest Chinese Walmart appliances with a temperature precision of say +/- 10C.
(whelp - after checking, it even seems that the Miele oven I had in mind as a reference point is over $5000 in the US)
> Just like the "beverage identification" in Vessyl, it presumably adds a reasonable amount to the cost of the thing (as well as another breakable component) when selecting "A chicken leg" in an app or something would be sufficient.
Selecting common recipes from the console is a fairly common feature even in inexpensive microwaves and toaster ovens. Moving that to a phone app isn't really much of a comparative selling point, and its cheap and easy for existing incumbents in the market to replicate.
Onboard identification is much more of a unique feature. Sure, it adds quite a bit to the cost, but -- as long as it remains relatively unique -- it probably adds more to the appeal and potential selling price than to the cost.
> Obviously none of us know the price breakdown but it adds to a cost that will total $3000 for non pre-orders. Even if it's a very useful feature, that much money for an oven that is too small to cook a meal for a family ensures it will not reach a mass market.
The first popular countertop microwave oven was sold in 1967 at a price that is equivalent to about $3,500 now. New tech in appliances is often very expensive; the early adopters (as in many fields) are people that aren't very price sensitive if there are new features that aren't available elsewhere.
Anyway, a countertop oven that can handle up to 11"x16" baking dishes isn't too small to cook a family meal, so even if your premise was correct, its not really applicable to the device in question.
Image recognition with visible spectrum is pretty limited. I can put a egg-based or sugar-based glaze on something and it will turn brown faster, without making the meat cook any faster.
What might be more interesting is a gas-phase chromatography which analyses the vapors and deduces the various reactions going on. But that's going to be severely over-kill (and incredibly priced).
Well in the video it used a temperature probe to detect when the meat was done, then it cranked up the heat to brown. So in that scenario your glaze would be just fine.
But I am not defending this product. It may find a market but it would not be for me. I have been learning to cook through trial and error and find it fun and rewarding. Not only that, it really doesn't take that much time.
Personally if I were writing the firmware I'd put in color correction based on a DSP filter of the last couple minutes of heating element power (because everything looks falsely red under a red heating element) and then analyze the color corrected image to brown/broil my chow such that its perfectly browned while not incinerated. Sometimes there isn't much time difference between browned and burned, think of caramels, etc.
Likewise I feel microwave ovens should have a microphone to sell captured conversation data to corporations and the NSA ... oh wait strike that ... I mean analyze the sound of popping popcorn and stop the oven at a time that optimized the poppping yield while optimistically minimizing burning.
Given the bifurcation of the american economy into a small number of uber rich and a vast number of dirt poor, its hard to sell a $3000 oven when that represents a substantial portion of a line cook's annual salary. If you only use it a hundred times its cheaper to hire a cook either directly or indirectly via a restaurant owner. The uber rich could afford $30K or $300K so you're leaving cash on the table, and the average $30K/yr joe6pack will never be able to afford it. The game plan could be to monetize as much as possible in the short term before the Chinese clones arrive at walmart for $99 rather than being a sustainable luxury goods business. Or maybe not.
Apparently it can recognize what you put inside it from the camera. You can also stream the video to your iPhone - allowing you to post time lapses of your roast chicken to Vine I suppose.
Their 'special' price is $1500 if you pre-order. Looks like they want to charge double that after their promo period ends.
Any good cook is not going to need some gimmicky gadget like this and will likely stay clear of this. You could get so many other great tools and more useful gadgety things for what they're asking. Immersion circulator, anyone?
I probably have $1500 in cookware and my knife collection and large stand mixer and just cooking stuff in general, but if you buy quality it lasts decades (or at least it used to), which might be a slightly longer time horizon than the typical gadget, or in this case, toaster oven.
Agreed one hundred percent. I try to stay away from single-purpose gadgets, myself, out of desire to save space, but there are a few things I look forward to buying in a few years' time.
A few (2-4?) good knives (full tang), a honing steel, a large wood cutting board, and a knife block would likely be the first things I'd recommend someone starting out to get, along with a basic knife skills class. In addition to buying quality items, caring for them properly will definitely serve you well.
I picked up an Anova a few months ago for $150. That might be the best bang for the buck kitchen purchase I've made. Certainly ranks up there with a stand mixer and microplane.
This thing is cool, really cool. So the novelty factor easily makes it worth more than another toaster oven. But I can go get another toaster oven on Amazon for 5% of that, so..yea, staying clear
The camera is to recognize what recipe you put in the oven. Not sure if full HD was required, but maybe they found it gave better accuracy for the cost difference.
Came here to say, this seems like a job for a low power 16-bit or 32-bit MCU, probably not that Tegra chip. Or are we Bitcoin mining while we cook dinner?
nVidia positioned the K1 towards the automotive industry (for all of driver assistance, computer vision etc) [0]. Since control systems there will be similar to control systems with this oven (knobs, dials etc) I'd imagine that there's simplifications there; furthermore there'll be decent product support etc.
SoCs cost at most like $20 each (if you have scale, which these guys won't)); the cost amounts from elsewhere. They'll form a comparatively small part of the total cost (which they can iterate on in later editions) but that make things simpler overall.
If they wanted to, they could just include dev boards in the devices; at $300 it would only be 10% of the price.
Seems like a fun idea, and it potentially allows really precise cooking with the internal probes too. Hopefully they don't go to overboard with the social media and wireless connection and focus on making something practical in the kitchen.
For example, including over the air updates. I am imagining an XBox like scenario where you just want to cook dinner but you have to wait 20 minutes for it to update.
At first glance it looks really neat, but I was disappointed to see that this doesn't have combi oven functionality. For the price I would guess this would retail at, I wouldn't be willing to buy this over a combi oven.
edit: I missed that the MSRP is $3000. I was right, I'm not willing to consider this over a (for example) nice built-in Wolf combi oven in the same price bracket. I'll also argue most people would be better served with a combi oven over this device. There are some neat ideas here, but I don't get the appeal.
I have been thinking the same thing. For this price, for a so-called "smart" oven, there is no excuse that it's not a combi or cvap oven. I wouldn't consider purchasing any standalone oven appliance for this price unless it was combi or cvap.
Before any other "smart" features I'd want:
* Precise temperature control between ~100F-450F
* Precise humidity control from 0%-100% relative humidity
* Dry bulb temperature, wet bulb temperature, and an internal temperature probe (preferably up to 2 internal probes).
* High temperature sear/broil
If you want it to be "smart" then forget the camera identification and allow me simply select "roast chicken" and have it cook to an internal temperature of ~155F (165F if you so choose) at 100% humidity before automatically turning the humidity down to 0% and switching to broil to crisp the skin.
That's how we built our app, you tell Cinder it's chicken and it's the time/temperature profile. You can also manually control temperature precisely from 70F to 525F, and the even high heat sear has amazed many chefs. We looked at steam but it's challenging because water reservoirs limit cooking time, or running plumbing is beyond reach for most homes (but something restaurants do). I'd like to build one in the future. Meanwhile, Cinder is $499 (email me for a HackerNews discount: [email protected]).
> Like cruise control on your car, June continually calculates the power needed to maintain a constant temperature
So you say it has a thermostat in it, then?
> Food cooks faster while using less energy than traditional ovens
So you say it's a convection oven, then?
> June sends you a push notification when your food is done. And you can customize your alerts so you aren’t disturbed you when you’re away from home.
So you say I can disable the alert... that tells me dinner is ready... because I'm away from... um. Somebody didn't really think this one through, then?
> > Like cruise control on your car, June continually calculates the power needed to maintain a constant temperature
> So you say it has a thermostat in it, then?
Having a thermostat is not the same as continuously maintaining a constant temperature. Typical "dumb" ovens have thermostats, but they maintain a rough temperature by turning on, overshooting the target temperature, cutting the heat entirely, dropping substantially under the target temperature, and repeating that cycle.
> So you say I can disable the alert... that tells me dinner is ready... because I'm away from... um. Somebody didn't really think this one through, then?
There's often more than one person who lives in a home and may use an oven. Its quite possible for one of them to be away from home and not want notifications, while another is at home and using the oven.
> So you say I can disable the alert... that tells me dinner is ready... because I'm away from... um. Somebody didn't really think this one through, then?
Ann doesn't want alerts from her oven when she's away from home. Bob, who is at home, will still need to use the oven.
I'm skeptical how a small form factor oven like this could provide even heating that is required for many kinds of baking, even if it has convection fans. Also, having such a small volume means that most of the heat will escape when the door opens making it difficult to get that crucial "oven spring" for bread baking.
It seems like a perfectly acceptable (albeit pricy) alternative to a toaster over, however.
> Also, having such a small volume means that most of the heat will escape when the door opens...
Supposedly, there's an air curtain to help with that problem.
> It seems like a perfectly acceptable (albeit pricy) alternative to a toaster over, however.
It may be an alternative to a toaster oven, but is that a good thing? Even the best toaster oven isn't very good, if you go by testing by Cooks Illustrated for example. I don't see how this one can perform any better given, as you point out, the physics limitations of a small oven.
Yes and no; pure hardware clones are one thing, but high quality software, content, customer education about a new product category, and marketing are not categories that cloners have (yet) done particularly well. Beyond that, hardware lends itself to hard IP protection -- Pantelligent's technology is patent pending, and it's likely that other smart cooking products are as well.
I'm holding out for a kitchen system that orders and stocks the food, fetches it from the fridge, (at the touch of a button) prepares and plates it and then (most importantly) washes the dishes and puts them away.
This current oven incarnation seems like more bother and expense than it would be worth. More stuff to get in the way and break. Not KISS at all. But then again I'm a good (and fast) cook and simply can't see how the smart oven would do anything to help.
To be charitable, maybe this technological step is necessary to realize the dream of fully automated food preparation. I fully expect one day to see this dream fulfilled. And from this perspective a hearty round of applause for the inventors.
I've been a huge fan of toaster ovens for as long as I've been heating up food and just can't seem to find one that does what it needs to do well. It toasts too slow or it's the wrong size or heats unevenly. Seems like a simple problem to fix but I've been through 5 different ones over the last decade+ with mostly lame results.
As such, this is _very_ appealing to me. I haven't owned a microwave in several years so the ability to reheat something while I'm somewhere else in the house is fantastic. A little pricey for me (not saying anything about the value, just a lot to spend) but I might just go for it.
If you trust Cooks Illustrated, Breville's top end toaster oven ($250 on Amazon Prime) is at the top for toaster oven performance and works well. Have you tried that one?
Personally, I'm more interested in auditioning Cuisinart's mini combi oven ($300 on Amazon Prime) before going all in on a built-in, but I haven't read any reviews I trust yet.
I don't know about this, but I would love a secure peripheral for controlling my oven over the internet that also had high quality thermometers.
I particularly enjoy slow cooking meat all day, but need to budget time to come home before it nears my target temperature. If I could measure the temperature of the meat remotely and adjust my oven, that would be awesome (or even set a limit at which the oven will stop cooking and lower the temperature to keep the meat warm only).
What I don't want is to buy an entire oven. I want to be able to buy a high quality oven/range like a Wolf and use such a device with a high quality oven of my choice.
While the camera is useful if the image recognition works well, I don't see this things being as good as one of my Miele ovens. They heat up faster, have many automatic programs including with temperature probe, and with the steam oven I can cook vegetables and other things as well.
That said, there is a lot of room on the software side to improve. I have 100 ideas that are 'easy' to implement that could life the Miele range to another level, but in my contacts with them, it seems like they are typical in that they're very hardware focused.
Sensing the internal temperature of a roast and cooking until it's done is a nice idea. Convection and aesthetics are good. Efficiency is good.
The HD camera, food detection, phone app, and touchscreen are waaaay overkill, in my opinion.
I don't want to have to put my oven on the WiFi, and it shouldn't need software updates. The useful functions ought to be simple enough to code once and ship.
This looks really awesome. I probably won't be an early adopter, but I'm definitely looking forward to more smart kitchen appliances. I just hope they can all work together. It's kind of stupid if my frying pan, oven, and fridge all have their own competing recipe apps and databases.
Another stupid product which exists for the sake of technology.
$3000 for a fucking oven. Seriously. For that you can get a professional kitchen oven with decent warm up time, is easy to clean and serviceable for a couple of decades without too much effort.
Also how does it see through the tinfoil over my chicken? Does it know the difference between a sirloin and a rib eye?
Dear hardware startups: Stop taking random things and adding technology and $2000 to shaft some cash off people with loose credit habits. Build stuff that is fundamentally game changing. Now I know that's hard, and that's the point.
"Food ID uses the camera and sensors to recognize commonly cooked foods. The camera communicates with the NVIDIA K1 Quad-Core ARM Cortex and the NVIDIA Kepler GPU with 192 CUDA cores." ~ http://support.juneoven.com/article/69-how-does-food-id-work...
How about an oven that:
- cleans easier?
- use less energy?
- stop me getting burnt while extracting trays?
- have simple ergonomic controls?
- in-built smoke detection?
- a loud timer?
- warms up faster?
These are all real-world problems that don't require software/hardware looking for a problem. I'm disappointed when I see the novelty approach taken to to solving problems of cooking. I thought this was already achieved with the microwave?
Instead what I would really like to see is a way to determine if food is going off, contaminated and where it comes from. This kind of food-tech would rock!