June Intelligent Oven

by uptown • 11 years ago

147 146 11 years ago

zoba• 11 years ago

Any idea why an oven needs an "NVIDIA Tegra K1 with 2.3 GHz quad-core processor and 192 CUDA GPU cores"? Seems like overkill?

jcromartie• 11 years ago

To stream video from the full HD camera. Now, any idea why an oven needs a full HD camera?

adam-a2• 11 years ago

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.

rodeoclown• 11 years ago

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.

RyanZAG• 11 years ago

So you can show off your food cooking on your phone to (hopefully) envious commoners who can't afford to spend whatever this costs on an oven.

- Signed, an envious commoner.

danbruc• 11 years ago

To be able to identify the food you put into it using machine vision. Now, any idea why an oven needs to identify the food you put into it?

VLM3• 11 years ago

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.

dhess• 11 years ago

Doubles as a heating element?

emranemran• 11 years ago

They're going to need some serious volume to source those K1s from nvidia.

dragonwriter9• 11 years ago

Any idea why an oven needs an "NVIDIA Tegra K1 with 2.3 GHz quad-core processor and 192 CUDA GPU cores"?

Obviously, to power the food identification, analysis, and cooking program recommendation system that makes it a "Smart Oven".

untog2• 11 years ago

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.

bryanlarsen5• 11 years ago

The oven can tell the difference between beef and pork.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/9/8751947/june-oven-identify-...

CHY872• 11 years ago

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.

[0] - on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2014/presentations/S4412-tegra-k1-automotive-industry.pdf

Mister_Snuggles• 11 years ago

Perhaps that is the heating element

mey• 11 years ago

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.

jerrysievert• 11 years ago

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.

rpcope1• 11 years ago

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?

aaron695• 11 years ago

Any idea why an oven needs an "NVIDIA Tegra K1 with 2.3 GHz quad-core processor and 192 CUDA GPU cores"? Seems like overkill?

This is why this oven exists???

Or do we think image recognition and AI is easy and can be programmed up on a weekend on a phone?

adam-a2• 11 years ago

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.

profinger• 11 years ago

You just saying that has elevated my blood pressure. Firefox does the same thing. GRRR haha

london888• 11 years ago

Are we now going to have ovens with social media accounts?

jon-wood• 11 years ago

Why not? You can have it Instagram your dinner without even having to take it out of the oven.

anigbrowl5• 11 years ago

Cook double portions to make your friends and family think you met someone!

ykl• 11 years ago

I want to hear John Syracusa do a review of this oven.

brooklyndavs• 11 years ago

Damn, someone beat to this joke!

MBCook• 11 years ago

I saw people mentioning him in tweets about this thing yesterday. The review of a Hamilton Beach from yesterday's ATP was good.

lambdaelite7• 11 years ago

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.

bryantraywick• 11 years ago

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.

lambdaelite7• 11 years ago

Well said—completely agree.

lifekaizen4• 11 years ago

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: eric@cindercooks.com).

VLM3• 11 years ago

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.

advertising• 11 years ago

Seems superfluous. The instagram upload of the cookies was a̶n̶ ̶e̶y̶e̶ ̶r̶o̶l̶l̶e̶r̶ well placed,

cottonseed• 11 years ago

Reaches 350°F in 4 minutes and 15 seconds.

Not going to work as a reflow oven, unfortunately.

mumrah• 11 years ago

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.

lambdaelite7• 11 years ago

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.

nathan_long• 11 years ago

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.

warvair• 11 years ago

"Over the air updates" via wi-fi? For an oven... I'm feeling a little luddite-y.

compumike3• 11 years ago

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.

Nomiku (YC W15) - $249 / $199 pre-order - http://www.nomiku.com/ - sous-vide water bath immersion circulator

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!)

bryanlarsen5• 11 years ago

You forgot Meld: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/meld/meld-a-perfect-mea... ($129 pre-order)

To me, it looks the most compelling because it's both the cheapest and most versatile.

I backed both Pantelligent & Meld. But if Meld would have kickstarted first, I wouldn't have backed Pantelligent.

compumike3• 11 years ago

Thanks for your support Bryan!

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.)

benbot• 11 years ago

There's also Mellow, which seems to be further along than most of the other noted options: https://cookmellow.com ($400 first pre-order run)

lambdaelite7• 11 years ago

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.

hipsterrific2• 11 years ago

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.

0xdeadbeefbabe• 11 years ago

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.

rtfeldman2• 11 years ago

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.

moby_click2• 11 years ago

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.

lifekaizen4• 11 years ago

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.

qq662• 11 years ago

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.

hipsterrific2• 11 years ago

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.

bliti2• 11 years ago

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.

DiabloD32• 11 years ago

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.

Also, love the intro video, has a nice punchline.

gmac• 11 years ago

It looks like some non-stick thing, which I won't allow in my kitchen.

For reasons of style/principle, or because Teflon and aluminium are associated with possible health risks?

I use a mix of steel and non-stick ceramic pans — the latter are much easier to wash up, and also work better for some foods.

anigbrowl5• 11 years ago

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.

jkestner3• 11 years ago

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.

lifekaizen4• 11 years ago

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.

moby_click2• 11 years ago

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!

malandrew2• 11 years ago

There is also Mellow, which I pre-ordered last year. I'm especially excited about using it to cook eggs with perfect soft yolks.

https://cookmellow.com/meet-mellow/

outsidetheparty• 11 years ago

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?

DanBC• 11 years ago

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.

dragonwriter9• 11 years ago

> 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.

nathan_f77• 11 years ago

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.

nviennot• 11 years ago

This reminds me of my DIY reflow oven: http://viennot.com/reflow_oven.pdf

joshcanhelp• 11 years ago

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.

lambdaelite7• 11 years ago

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.

Animats• 11 years ago

It's a reasonable idea, but it needs to cost $300 instead of $3000. Expect clones to be available in Shentzen at that price point by next year.

compumike3• 11 years ago

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.

TheMagicHorsey• 11 years ago

I wish they would give us the specs for the actual oven hardware ... as opposed to the specs for the computer in it.

jkestner3• 11 years ago

That tells you something about the target market.

pbreit9• 11 years ago

Yeah, it was weird to keep hearing about the Nvidia whatever which to me seems totally irrelevant to anything (and super un-Apple/Path-like).

choward• 11 years ago

So it's "smart" and costs $3,000. Are there public APIs or am I at the complete mercy of their software?

dmix• 11 years ago

So many of these consumer products and "IoT" deprioritize public APIs, it's a shame... They are missing out on potentially huge sub-communities.

petegrif• 11 years ago

It's very ugly.

kolev• 11 years ago

Another oversimplification of the culinary art, but this time - a costly one!

malandrew2• 11 years ago

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.

crimsonalucard• 11 years ago

I need something smart enough to beat the microwave.

colept• 11 years ago

The warranty is only one year - not ideal for a $3000 counter top appliance.

jqm• 11 years ago

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.

bootload2• 11 years ago

Does it recognise all my food?

"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!

pcl• 11 years ago

- warms up faster?

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.

silencio2• 11 years ago

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).

bootload2• 11 years ago

"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.

wumbernang• 11 years ago

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.

roel_v2• 11 years ago

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.

phmagic• 11 years ago

Reminds me of Ronco's products:

https://www.ronco.com/products/rotisserie-ovens/4000-stainle...

Just set it and forget it

June Intelligent Oven

Related Stories