An Oven That Runs Android 123
Google85 writes "Dacor is exhibiting an oven that runs Android at CES 2013: it pulls together a 1GHz processor, 512MB of DDR2 RAM and Android 4.0.3. It also cooks food. At the front of the Discovery Wall Oven, there's a 7-inch LCD touch panel. From the article: '...The oven-maker's Discovery IQ controller cooking app will offer up interactive cooking guides, recipes and all other things cooking, although you'll still be able to install more standard apps from Google Play. The built-in cooking app offers preprogrammed dishes and adjustable timings for several dishes, while you can even program the oven to cook food remotely from any Android device.'"
finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:finally! (Score:4, Funny)
The oven uses dual P4 chips for heating elements.
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I was wondering what good a computer in a stove would do. Remote cooking? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense... leave the food in the shut-off oven to spoil for a few hours, then have the oven running when nobody's home. Yeah, that sounds REAL smart.
Re: finally! (Score:1)
Compromised system (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Compromised system (Score:4, Funny)
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It'll be okay, we'll just send in MegaMan.EXE. [strategywiki.org]
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I'm pretty sure you could hard-wire safety mechanisms that prevented this.
Similar concept here: http://hackaday.com/2012/10/13/open-source-android-thermostat/#more-87901 [hackaday.com]
A post by the creator in his forums:
As a few people have pointed out, there is some risk that your heater may get stuck in the on state or off state if the app or your phone was to lock up. I've added a few safeguards against this already in the code and am going to add a few more, but I'd like to also find an all mechanical solution to this to ensure the thermostat fails safely if it does fail.
The best solution I know of is to use three bimetal switches to:
Break the circuit on the heater to turn it off if the temperature gets above 100F
Connect the circuit to turn on the heater if the temperature gets below 45F
Connect the circuit to turn on the air conditioner if the temperature gets above 100F
The problem is most of the major manufacturers of these switches do not sell directly to the public. You have to place bulk orders. The few I have found such as these ( 1, 2, 3) are large, heavy, overkill and somewhat expensive. It would be hard to fit three of these in the case, and more may be needed when multi-stage support is added.
There are several cheap thermal fuses, but these only appear to be available for higher temperature ranges. The only reasonable solution I have been able to find so far are these switches from Amico. (104F NC, 104F NO). The only problem with these is they are Chinese made and have not been UL certified. I think an uncertified mechanical fail safe is a whole lot better than no mechanical fail safe at all, so unless someone knows of a better option I plan on including these in the next design. I really hope someone can provide a better option though.
http://androidthermostat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5 [androidthermostat.com]
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Break the circuit on the heater to turn it off if the temperature gets above 100F Connect the circuit to turn on the heater if the temperature gets below 45F Connect the circuit to turn on the air conditioner if the temperature gets above 100F
The article is about ovens, and you seem to be referring to thermostats. There's not much you would normally cook without exceeding 100F.
Ovens under automatic software control may be a bit more dangerous than heaters. Ovens are in living spaces, and may be danger
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There's not much you would normally cook without exceeding 100F.
So pick a metal that breaks at 500F instead, or whatever would be a good upper range.
Re:Compromised system (Score:4, Funny)
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They should call this: An oven with a tablet instead of a door. But then, maybe nobody would buy it?
Well, touch screen blisters are hard to put a good spin on... but there are countless hot porn jokes in the offing!
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That's all I need, to have someone compromise my oven with malware and burn my roast.
Ha Ha Ha Ha How else are we going to Ma Ma Ma Make the world safe for Ma Ma Ma Max Headroom [youtube.com]?
Apps (Score:1)
Does it run ntpd? (Score:2)
If it'll just set its own clock... You can get Android now or wait for iOS. I think for the price, I'll stick with my $1k LG oven and set my own clock though.
The iOS oven (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The iOS oven (Score:5, Funny)
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I would prefer Raspberry Pi!
(ba-dum-tish!)
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Re:The iOS oven (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The iOS oven (Score:5, Funny)
What about the Fandroids who'll lash out at anything that isn't from the hand of Google? Where do they fit into your sad little world?
Eating badly cooked food and marveling over how "free" it is while trying to ignore a non-stop stream of advertisements screaming at them from their ovens.
Reversificationism -W (Score:1)
Way over-clock it, then you get "Android that Runs Ovens".
Bend over, rover (Score:2)
It makes sense to put one on the fridge, but don't most of us have an oven below the range? If you use your oven a whole lot you might want it up higher, but in that case you'll probably want a more serious oven, too...
How will they prevent it from overheating? (Score:1)
Maybe it's a feature, it'll use some surplus Pentium 4s hooked up to a convection loop heatsink to cook the food.
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Now I know you're trying to be funny (and failing because the K7 cpu smokes when the heatsink is removed) but you raise a valid point. Most stoves with the fancy displays eventually burn out or fade after a few years due to the oven heat. So now my oven is totally useless because the display quit or a solder joint on the pcb failed.
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Planned obsolescence?
An excess of computers, wasting energy (Score:2, Insightful)
Better to have a $1 low-power embedded CPU with an API, an external interface (Ethernet, USB, WiFi, ...) and no display, so the oven can be integrated into a home network and controlled by a widget running on the user's own computer. Every appliance independently trying to do everything simply adds complication, with no benefit.
And pacing isn't wasting energy? (Score:2)
Better to have a $1 low-power embedded CPU with an API, an external interface (Ethernet, USB, WiFi, ...) and no display, so the oven can be integrated into a home network and controlled by a widget running on the user's own computer.
Which would require the user to pace back and forth between the room with "the user's own computer" and the kitchen with the oven.
Re: And pacing isn't wasting energy? (Score:1)
Why pace? My tablet is portable.
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Which means you have to remember to always have your tablet handy if you are about to cook something.
Point still stands
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Actually, an atmega368 can comfortably run a serial 20x4 character lcd, a keypad, a serial (xbee) or ethernet, cost lest than $100 ... and you can put it on a motion sensor, so if the oven is off it turns on only when you are nearby.
But being an electric oven it is a watt-hog anyway. I prefer an electric oven, but the top has to be gas. I would be a little worried to have my gas appliance on the net. Maybe even without the net it can silently kill you with a leak.
But I agree with you and I don't get why th
When's Thanksgiving? (Score:1)
"I'm just gonna have a piece of that cake you just made. You have to! -- The licenses on derivative works, and all that..."
The new generation (Score:1)
Finally, I can upgrade from my NetBSD running toaster!
"Apple pulp cookies" using Android (Score:4, Funny)
should be the first recipe on the free book that comes with the oven.
"Apples think too much of themselves. When beaten to pulp however, they are delicious to consume. Apple pulp ideally needs to be roasted slowly to a crisp, using our special Android program. Although this app is free, and we have not applied for any patents, it is unlikely you will get this on an Apple iPhone anytiime soon. So enjoy your daily dose of "Apple pulp cookies" to keep the doctors and lawyers away."
Can you make circuits with it (Score:2)
If it has custom profiles suitable for doing solder reflow, I could see getting one.
5 years from now (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:5 years from now (Score:5, Interesting)
If it's going to be a "smart" device I would expect it to be about the same build quality as phones and MP3 players. In 5 years the batteries wont hold a charge, the door wont stay shut and you'll have to put a rubber band on it to keep the on button pushed in. Then you can justify getting a new one!
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5 years from now? Not a problem. (Score:5, Funny)
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I have apps on my android phone from about 5 years ago. They work fine. All you are going to want on the thing, presumably, are apps related to cooking or the oven itself.
You won't need to upgrade the hardware, because you aren't going to upgrade the software. You're going to leave the OS on it as-is for 15 years and use it to run super-simple apps which you could probably run on a computer built in 1999.
If I were designing this thing in hobbyist mode I probably wouldn't even have bothered making something
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With many of the top downloaded Android apps being written for Eclair (2.0 not 2.1) and those which don't actually supporting the even older Donut (1.6) somehow I don't think this is a major problem.
Also why do you suddenly think that the existence of future apps renders the old ones obsolete? Quite the opposite is true. The Android Market or Play Store or whatever the hell they call it will actively block incompatible updates and prevent them from being installed on the device.
At that point all there is to
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Ask Slashdot!
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/12/10/23/0233213/what-to-do-with-those-first-generation-photo-frames [slashdot.org]
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/12/09/11/1417246/ask-slashdot-what-to-do-with-found-calculators [slashdot.org]
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/08/05/16/1332249/what-to-do-with-old-laptops [slashdot.org]
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/11/10/14/217243/ask-slashdot-what-to-do-with-old-webcams [slashdot.org]
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You mean like an iMac that integrates a quickly obsolete computer with an expensive monitor that would normally have economic value over multiple generations of computer? That kind of obsolete? Or did you mean something different?
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I do agree with you, but most people that buy Dacor appliances seem to be the type to be remodeling their kitchens every 5 years anyways.
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The cost of an ESC(kind of)/dimmer device that can be safely controlled without burning themselves to ashes. If the oven already has some kind of timer (chances are good if it is an electric oven, especially if it has microwave) then probably it hasmind-bending proprietary crap running in it you would have to cut in half to interface to it.
But yes, a simple electric oven could be controlled with a few relays and a dimmer. I would be scared to automate my gas oven/burners though. It is OK that sometimes my l
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The cost of an ESC(kind of)/dimmer device that can be safely controlled without burning themselves to ashes
Cheapie cheapie. You should see what the CNC and PLC guys do cheap. At these "thermal mass" "thermal inertia" you don't do high rate PWM (well, actually thats pretty much what an induction cooktop is, but I digress). An opto isolated SSR is not much higher cost than a physical switch of similar quality / reliability / power level, crazy as that sounds to old timers.
My stove already has nice controls. Give me something new and useful.
I think controlling the oven is nearly useless to me. What I would lik
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Your insurance company.
Awesome! (Score:2)
*Ducks*
Next thing (Score:2)
Android powered kitchen sink
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Will it have arms and hands to do the dishes?? I'm in... OH wait, if it gets hacked it could attack me while I'm using "manual mode"...
Finally! (Score:5, Interesting)
Finally! Appliances that last less than two years. Regular shoddy merchandise cut the replacement time to about 5 years, but that wasn't good enough. We need appliances on a two year update cycle. This is especially true for the refrigerator. The damned things last for decades. Decades, I tell you! That lousy refrigerant that also lubricates the pump. Awful stuff. Finally we can get those on a two-year upgrade cycle too.
Oh, BTW, "we" are the manufacturers. Customers? I think we heard of those one time. We turned them into "consumers". They WILL comply.
Could be useful (Score:5, Interesting)
I know the consensus on /. is going to be that this idea is totally silly.
But, I can think of a few features I wouldn't mind having on a smart oven:
* It joins my home network, and I can put a widget on my desktop showing current oven temperature and the value of any countdown timers running.
* It has optional temperature probes, so if you want to do your meat right, instead of cooking by time you cook until the meat hits the correct temperature. And the current temperature appears on the desktop widget I mentioned above, and an alert fires when the temperature hits a certain value.
I have a meat temperature probe that came complete with a remote display/alarm. (The worst thing about it: if you take it out of range, it never goes off. It really should have a "watchdog" feature where it says "hey, I haven't received a heartbeat in a while, I must be out of range or something" and the alarm goes off.) I would love having the oven on my home network, using open protocols; let's face it, if I'm waiting for a pie to cook or something I'm going to be at my computer.
I can think of sillier ideas.
* Lots of fancy cook cycles. I looked at TFA and it seems they already have this one covered.
* QR codes on foods you cook in the oven, and you wave them past a cheap camera on the oven and it sets up the cook cycle!
* Multiple, convenient, named timers. The "Pie0" timer is almost done, but the "Pie1" timer has another ten minutes on it. I wouldn't buy one just for this, but I'd use it if I had it.
* Voice input for things like setting timer names?
This isn't the hottest idea I've ever heard, but it's not completely half-baked.
Re:Could be useful (Score:4, Interesting)
After the technology takes off, I then would like to get some photo recognition software going. My ideal oven will indicate when food is done by using color and pattern recognition that it downloaded from the Internet along with the recipe.
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This isn't the hottest idea I've ever heard, but it's not completely half-baked.
Yeah, I'm starting to warm up to the idea.
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Yes, I can see how that goes:
- nineteen minutes, please
Starting ninety minute program...
OTA update started. Please to not shut down the own while this is in progress
... you must like your meat really rare (Score:2)
Look, if you stick a probe into a piece of meat, and it then wanders out of the closed oven, your meat is to rare! Either kill it more or don't leave it outside the fridge for so long.
QR codes (Score:2)
They could be printed with food safe UV ink on the foods themselves. I've wondered why microwaves don't do this. I realize that cook times vary, but you could store the kWh to cook the food along with power levels and timing in the QR code.
What next??? (Score:1)
A gun, an oven, what next? The toilet will run Android to help me aim...
Other apps = Angry Birds? (Score:1)
How do you prepare Angry Birds in an Android oven? 450 degrees for an hour per every 4 lbs?
I assume they taste like chicken...
Great for Jokesters... & even arsonists...? (Score:2)
So, expect someone to cook your breakfast on your Birthday, etc (a nice enough event).
But, on Apr Fool's Day, someone could set-off smoke detectors (worse if they also open
fire-sprinklers, that could damage furnishings, etc.)
And, arsonists could set a fire remotely... from many Km's ago (creating a bullet-proof ...otherwise, a cool toy / tool.
alibi).
Processor running a bit hot... (Score:2)
Batteries? (Score:2)
That settles it. BSD has lost, and will die. (Score:2)
Of course, it's a troll: BSD is dying. But this one settles it once and for all.
After all, BSD can only run on a lowly toaster [slashdot.org], now Android totally eclipses them by running on an oven! I don't think BSD can ever recover from such a smack in the face.
Android is for Wimps (Score:2)
I control my oven using DOS and DESQview with the command line. Weasels!
I feel like such a loser. (Score:2)
The people who design these things (Score:4, Informative)
Perfect! I want (the buggy) one! (Score:2)
No more christmas dinners to cook anymore, with the help from Google calendar :p
blast from the past (Score:3, Interesting)
"In the future, the proof of a person's technical skill will be based on their
ability to boot linux on random objects. Those who are able to get a bash
prompt on a toaster oven will be gods that walk among us, constantly harping
on our choice of distribution."
--deathbyzen (slashdot.org 14-Dec-05)
Excessive heat and electrocis? (Score:2)
I'm just curious how the electronics would handle the excessive heat over the course of time.
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Quit trying to make computerized kitchens happen! (Score:3)
OK, maybe not never, but they've been pushing the idea of computers making life in the kitchen for Suzie Homemaker a breeze since practically the days of Bletchley Park and its never completely taken off. "It can keep an inventory of ingredients you have on hand! A full database of recipes! Develop nutritionally complete meal plans! Automatic shopping lists! Step-by-step cooking instructions with automated temperature controls!"
And the people saw these innovations, and thought....meh.
Probably everyone here has a microwave that let's you put in the time/power for dozens of food items with the mere push of a couple of buttons - "press Potato once for one potato, twice for two potatoes" - and we can barely be bothered to even use that. (I used the Water button on mine for my morning cuppa tea, but that's it.) We just go "eeeeehhh, three minutes sounds about right." Cooking is still a realm where people are perfectly comfortable with winging it.
.
Brilliant!! (Score:1)
Angry Birds while baking Turkey (Score:2)
Perhaps there's a limit to the devices that actually need Android on them? I mean, I'm sure I don't need a toothpick with Android installed...
Integrate this with.... (Score:2)
"Cornish game hen? Yeah, I can do that. Let me call up the template..."
Phone integration... (Score:2)
If this thing lets me check the status of my oven on my phone, and does things like ring me when the roast is cooked, I'm interested.
Just wait (Score:2)
First there will be QR codes on food packages to set the oven's temperature and cooking time.
Then there will be people starving, because they threw out the package before scanning it.
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Soon there'lll be no device left which doesn't feature some
Its a fad thing. About a generation. In the 80s/90s you couldn't buy a kitchen appliance without a shitty two button clock that would never be set and was completely useless for everyone, although it meet the "checkbox" requirement for all appliances to have a shitty digital clock. Stove, microwave, breadmaker, stand mixer, coffee maker, old fashioned cord phone, fridge, heck I bet there were hand miixers and blenders with shitty digital clocks.
That is mostly dead and if you want a modern kitchen you onl