Networked Refrigerated Microwave

shades6666 writes "BBC news is reporting that Tonight's Menu Intelligent Ovens has developed a refrigerated microwave that can be controlled over the net or by mobile phone. The prototype uses a Peltier cooling device. It expects the appliances to be ready by the end of the year, costing around $2,000."

One Fundamental Problem

[dewboy]

One of my friends and I often discuss the idea of the networked house, where everything can be remotely controlled. He always brought up one problem when I said "Hey wouldn't a networked stove/microwave/etc be a really cool idea??" : He pointed out that you actually need to physically put the food into the device - something that requires either a lot of expensive machinery or ... you. And a lot of foresight. Most people who are lazy enough to use something like this lack foresight. I know I do.

This is a bad thing.

[Krapangor]

Modern microwave ovens are rather bad for the users health: Most of them are low quality Japanese/Korean/Chinese stuff with leaky shielding so that much microwave radition leaks out and affects the user. Using a microwave oven is only recommended in emergenies.
And now these companies develop methods which make using the microwave oven easier thus tempting incautious users to use it. (The bad user interface of old style microwave ovens was in fact a rather good protection of the users from using them.)
But this is the side effect of modern libertarian capitalism: companies do everything to satisfy their greed and sell even such potentially dangerous products.

Crock pot?

[guido1]

I may have more culinary talents than most, but if I know that I'm going to be too busy to make dinner, I'll toss a slab of beef and some potatos in the crock pot in the morning, and eat whenever I want to at night.

And it sure as heck tastes better than anything that comes out of the microwave.

Moving on...

Does anyone here think internet appliances are going to take off? The only good ideas I can see are:

A webcam in the fridge, so I could check if I needed to hit the store, and
Thermostat, so if I'm going to be gone all night I'm not heating/cooling the house needlessly.

Re:$2000???

[Anonymous Coward]

because you figured out in 21 seconds what it took him 6 years to figure out.

I'll pass

[TheSHAD0W]

Well, first off, you're saving what, 6 minutes at the most? That's how long it takes to cook most microwave dishes, except the ones which require quite a bit of manual assistance, which this gizmo couldn't prepare automatically anyway. You're also limited to the dish you chose when you left the house; no flexibility for last-minute changes of appetite. (Haven't you ever gone to the freezer for one nukable food, and decided to cook something else instead?)

For the pirce and complexity of this gizmo, I think I'd rather just nuke it when I'm ready for it.

How about something a little simpler

[ip_vjl]

Since microwaves don't take all that long to cook anyway, I don't see a huge need for it to start without me.

But if you're going to the trouble of networking your microwave, how about having it do something useful.

Put a barcode reader on it so that when I pull out the box of frozen Mac and Cheese, I can scan it and have it lookup the correct cook cycle for an oven of that wattage.

Or for these things that require XX minutes on low then XX on high ... it could just figure that out by itself and set itself accordingly.

A small LCD display could even display instructions at certain points in the cycle (beeping to get my attention) "Remove cover and stir, then press the START button to continue cooking."

Er...

[Skyshadow]

When, exactly, did life become so hectic that we need to be automating the microwave to speed up dining even more?

Learn to cook for real, people. It's cheaper, sometimes healthy and definately more satisfying. Cooking is a lot like coding -- you follow instructions. Good cooking is a lot like hacking -- you follow the instructions and then do what feels right.

Lemme get you started:

Cajun Honey Shrimp and Sausage Linguine
2 servings
1/2 package linguine
2 serrano peppers, sliced
3 cloves garlic, sliced
3 T honey
3 T balsamic vinegar
3 tomatoes, chopped
1/4 c. fresh chopped basil or 2 T dried
1 link hot Italian sausage, casing removed and rolled into marble-sized balls
cream cheese
olive oil
12 21-25 ct. uncooked shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/4 c. sliced green onions

Boil water for pasta in a large pot. Heat saucepan to medium with a small amount of olive oil. Toss in the sausage balls, sauteing until they're browned (3 minutes or so). Add garlic, cook 1 minute. Add chopped tomatoes to pan and stir it up. Add the pasta to the pasta pot and begin cooking according to package directions (usually 11-12 minutes). Add peppers and basil to pan, stir together. Stir honey and balsamic vinegar into sauce. Add up to 1/4 c water from the boiling pasta pot (this will be dependant on how much water was in the tomatoes; you'll get a good feel for this after a few times making this dish). Continue to stir sauce periodically. When pasta is done, drain and return to pot with 2 or 3 T of olive oil - just enough to make it a little shiny. Mix in two spoonfulls of the sauce and mix well.

Add shrimp and green onions to sauce, cook 1-2 minutes, stirring a few times and flipping shimp in the sauce -- DO NOT OVERCOOK THE SHRIMP!

To serve, put pasta on a plate and top with sauce. Spoon 4 or 5 1/4 t. balls of cream cheese on top. Serve with wine; I highly recommend a Gewürztraminer.

Re:Peltier bad for cooling

[Pirogoeth]

I'll vouch for this. We have an instrument in our lab for autosampling which has (had) a peltier cooling system. The samples were required to be cooled between 2-8C. No matter how much fiddling we did with it, we couldn't get it cold enough. We managed to get it down to 6, but that wasn't cold enough to keep the samples below 8.

We returned it and went with a unit that had an actual refrigeration unit built in and have been happy.

What are we coming to?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Fifty years ago, consumers were promised automation gadgets that would give us more free time. What do we have now? Remote controlled ovens to cook our food because we're too busy to cook it ourselves.

What have we come to?

I leave the house before the sun comes up every day. I wade through an hour's worth of traffic. I spend ten hours a day at my job, but only about twenty minutes at lunch, then wade through an hour's worth of traffic on the way home. It's dark when I get there. Weekends exist only to catch up on things I couldn't get done during the week.

I'm certain I'm not the only one out there that lives like this. Gadgets like this freezer/oven seem neat, but to me it suddenly throws into sharp contrast just what we're doing with our lives. Have we gotten so busy that we no longer have time to cook a meal? That's pretty fucking pitiful, if you ask me.

Regular oven more useful here

[altek]

I would think a real oven with the refrigeration and remote control would be more useful here... I mean who really cooks a meal that takes longer than 10 minutes in a microwave? However, it would be great to throw a meal in the oven for the day and have it start cooking an hour before you get home...

I'm of course glazing over the fact that any sort of appliance (especially one that can burn your house down) should not be accessible from the internet.

Who let the marketeers out?

[ivan256]

This is a great press release reprint. I wasn't aware that the BBC was counting that as journalism now too. Some choice quotes: "Embedded web technology developed by NASA" (and countless bored college students)... "Doesn't contain a computer" (as long as you define computer as an x86 based PC with a VGA monitor). Give me a break. When MIT students internet enabled their soda machines in the early '90s it was an original idea. Now it's been done before, and they're applying it to a fairly non-useful device (you can really only cook one thing in a microwave at a time).

Besides, people have been leaving their stuff in the oven on time-bake for ages, why do we suddenly need to refridgerate it for the whole day before the heat kicks in now? Can't we just have an internet enabled time-bake feature, and skip this silly refridgeration.

Re:What are we coming to?

[be-fan]

I've always wondered about the same thing. We're so busy making money to buy stuff like this, and we don't really think about what we're loosing. People are so busy they don't have time to see their kids more than once a week. I saw a magazine recommend that a family sit down to a meal together at least once a week! Once a week? In my house, it was every day unless something unusual came up. Then you have the impact on politics. Democracy requires a knowledgable public. How's the public supposed to be knowledgable if they don't even have time to read the paper or research before voting (that is, if they can get off work long enough to vote at all). It's getting to the point where I'm contemplating becoming a hermit, that is if I can figure out how to get broadband in a remote cave on top of a mountain...

Re:What are we coming to?

[pen]

This is certainly the path many people are taking today, but it is a choice that each one of them makes.

• You choose to work 10 hours a day.
• You (may) choose to lead a life that requires working 10 hours a day.
• You choose to own and drive a car that you have to pay for.
• You choose to work at a job that is only accessible by car.
• ... and so on

Re:$2000???

[HeyLaughingBoy]

While I think this device is ridiculouly overpriced for what it does... nuked food generally isn't too tasy anyway, they're on the right track. I considered converting a coffeepot into an oatmeal cooker cause I like oatmeal, and I was running out of time to make it right in the morning (hate that instant craap!!) Fortunately I figured out the problem was just that I needed to get up earlier, so I started going to bed 15 min earlier. But I digress. A better idea would be a crockpot that refrigerated the food. I often used my crockpot when I knew I'd be home late (like on a night when I had a 3-hour class after work and wouldn't be home before 9:30). If I could put meat, veggies, spices, etc in it the night before and keep them refrigerated until the morning at which point it would begin slow cooking, then we're on to something. This a couple of Peltier devices could handle. It should be pretty easy to convert a regular crock pot to do this. I'll have to see if I can get some cast off Peltier coolers from work to try it.
Might even be a reason to build a website with instructions :-)