OK, maybe I'm late to the party, but...

…it looks like someone’s finally come up with a sensible use for Internet-connected appliances:

 

Both the connected microwave and bread maker even come with UPC barcode readers which can automatically know how to prepare your food by scanning the packaging of whatever it is you want to eat (and download new UPC information for new products automatically over the Internet), while the connected coffee maker can remind you if you've forgotten to prepare coffee the night before and let you check over using the Home Hub whether coffee is brewing or is ready.

[via Gizmodo, as reported by Ole]

 

I’m still not sold on using a network to determine whether my coffee’s brewed or not (my house ain’t that big, and I’m not quite that lazy), but I think the idea of a microwave that can scan the bar code for prepared foods and know exactly how to cook them properly is very cool. Ambitious manufacturers could even automatically adjust cooking time to account for higher- or lower-powered microwave ovens. So you get to be lazy, and your food is more likely to be properly cooked. A definite win-win. Now if they can just keep the cost reasonable.

 

Oh, and the OS these wonderful machines will use? Windows CE .NET.

6 Comments

  • I agree with the microwave, especially since microwaves offer so many more features than any of us ever use. The instructions for my microwave that I just bought are 50 pages long! And you know what? I microwave everything on high or 50% power for a certain amount of time. No temperature-based cooking, no pausing, etc. And the instructions for the frozen meals have to be simple, so they are.



    Now maybe this can make it so my frozen meals are cooked exactly right without me having to bother with anything.

  • A refrigerator with similar functionality could be very valuable. If a refrigerator could tell you what you have in your refrigerator and it had some decent knowledge it could tell you:

    When to clean out certain items, a recipe for a certain type of food that has certain characteristics( "I want an Indian dish that is low fat for 3 people"), a reminder that it may be time to get something new.

    And assuming a connected kitchen I could imagine new processors that talked to the rest of the kitchen, and basically walked the user through the steps to make a gourmet meal. Fun stuff ahead.

  • theCoach,



    I'm not convinced on the fridge yet. Seems to me that at least in our fridge, the variety of foods stored would make a system that had to keep track of what's in there and when it needs to be used/thrown out more complicated than it would be worth. For example, I can certainly see where you could use a barcode scanner on a fridge to keep an inventory of frozen foods, milk and other dairy products, eggs, and other packaged foods. But what about meats and produce? If I have to do manual data entry every time I stick a bunch of celery in the fridge, it's probably not a feature I'd use.



    Not saying that you're wrong...just that I'm not sold on this yet. :-)

  • Oh my GAD :P finally a connected thing that makes sense.



    My microwave only has three button that count even though there are at least 20.



    Minute Plus : Add a minute and start.

    Stop/Clear : Stop and againg to clear.

    Start : If you stopped it

  • But <b>Andrew</b>, all that manual entry for the frig would be worth it if I could push a button and know whether or not I could make a batch of your famous chili! :-)

  • OK, Terri, *now* I'm sold. But you forget something important...that would *also* require an Internet-connected pantry that could tell me whether I had the tomatoes, beans, spices, and other non-refrigerated ingredients that make my Chili so yummy! :-)



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