How ‘Smart’ Do You Want Your Blender to Be? | Hacker News Reader

How ‘Smart’ Do You Want Your Blender to Be?

nytimes.com

24 pointsbootload49 comments

The most prevalent domestic 'smart' devices (dishwashers? washing machines? automatic transmissions? electric refrigeration?) were once-new concepts in the last 100 years, but have become almost invisible today. They don't shout "smart," and that's OK, but they all integrate a bit of control logic that helps the user do something easier/better/cheaper/faster than was possible before. That's how I define "smart" -- I think the network-connected / software aspect is more of an implementation detail.

I really don't want a smart blender or a smart fridge.

But a 'smart' thermostat? Might save energy (and money). A 'smart' sprinkler or lighting control system? Might save water or energy (and money). A 'smart' door lock? Might save time and effort getting keys copied or locks changed or letting in guests while away. A 'smart' frying pan? Might cook a salmon fillet to perfection every time and let me master new recipes the first time.

Does the reality of today's smart devices match the potential? Unclear.

But if 'smart' means something that will give me, the user, a superior value -- defined very conventionally and rationally, such as saving time, saving money, making something higher quality, or making something easier -- and if the superior value outweighs the added complexity and cost, then maybe I'll take a look.

(Disclaimer: I make a "smart" frying pan but am not particularly in love with the word "smart." It simply helps people cook easier/better/cheaper/faster. https://www.pantelligent.com/ - comments of all kinds are welcome.)

A "smart" refrigerator theoretically saves you money by reducing waste; a long-marketed feature for a hypothetical smart-fridge is that it tracks when you bought stuff and also knows, for each food item, how urgent it is to consume—and thus, could make meal suggestions for the sake of "using stuff up."

The thing is, that logic doesn't need to be in a fridge; it could just as well be in a grocery-delivery phone app or something. It just seems like a fridge is the place to put it because fridges hold food. So we keep trying to imagine smart fridges, instead of imagining more ambient software to achieve the same purpose—e.g. a "home guru" app for the Amazon Echo that would just tell you, the human, to go do something in your home at the right time for it to have an optimal effect.

Also if 'smart'-grid technology gets implemented it can time it's cooling cycles to when energy is cheaper. Saving money that way.

You'd need to store chilled water or something similar in order to do that....

... which would eventually leak out all over (and under) your floor and cause potentially thousands of dollars in damage. Ask me how I know. No water connected to my fridge, thanks.

> The most prevalent domestic 'smart' devices (dishwashers? washing machines? automatic transmissions? electric refrigeration?) were once-new concepts in the last 100 years, but have become almost invisible today. They don't shout "smart," and that's OK, but they all integrate a bit of control logic that helps the user do something easier/better/cheaper/faster than was possible before.

If these devices are "smart," any mechanical device is smart. None of them are (necessarily) programmed with control logic. "Smart," as far as I can tell, refers to objects that monitor how they are used and adjust their behavior in the future. I understand that the marketing for some products define smart down to "the power button is in an app on your phone."

See this 1946 Oldsmobile ad, "The Smart Way to Drive," referring to the new automatic transmission: http://oldsads.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/olds_08x.jpg -- really hammers on the "smart" theme. That was 70 years ago.

I'm simply suggesting that "smart" is a moving target based on the cutting edge technology of the day, and that many previous "smart" devices are now ubiquitous and invisible in daily life.

Oh I could imagine a smart kitchen where all food is tracked by RFID tags or even video. Think about it, putting your groceries into the the cabinets and they check the RFID for item and expiration, same with your fridge. With the fridge being powered it could sport one or two cameras to watch items move in/out of it if they did not sport tracking devices.

Then all that can and voice control, MOM WHERE IS MY TOASTED OATS, has the cabinet light up or signal that it has them or it replies voice that there are none.

all sorts of possibilities but it comes down to imagination and rapidly decreasing costs of the necessary electronics. I don't need a connected kitchen, I need a smart one "Hey dummy, your burning your lunch" to my phone, tablet, or pc, if not in the room. Asking "how do I cook this" and an OLED display on cabinet or appliance shows me.

> all food is tracked by RFID tags or even video

How are you going to solve the problems of 'bag of spinach I got at the farmer's market' or 'homemade pickles' or similar.

Stickers with RFID tags and a dumb-as-rocks UI that lets you say, with a single button press, "This tag is on some unwashed spinach!" and nothing more.

Network connected isn't just an implementation detail.

If it's on a network it has potential security problems and if the functions rely on the network then it needs updates.

Phones commonly don't get security updates after 2-3 years. The idea that a fridge will keep getting security updates for the lifetime of the fridge, say 20 years, is not realistic. Not to mention the problem that people often don't configure devices correctly. Perhaps some here remember VCRs with the perpetual flashing unset time.

The internet of things for companies and organisations that collect data and have staff to handle them and replace them regularly is a big deal. The internet of things in households is pretty dubious.

You could always rent your fridge. It could be manufactured by the people who run your grocery store. That's probably where the fridge is headed.

To me a smart blender is one that is available for use in my kitchen when I need it, and not when I dont need it (ie. wasting space).

Amazon style drone delivery + rental of household appliances is the future imo. A great way to save space in ever smaller city housing too

The smart I would LIKE would be a robust high temperature rated fanless immersion-rated VFD driving a direct connected 3 phase fanless immersion-rated motor with programmable (sane) rotation ramp up rates and torque monitoring via current sensors on each phase to deal intelligently and safely with jams and such, and tie in safety switches so people can't stick their hand in there without the VFD noticing and cutting out at the VFD level. Also if you're monitoring torque it can ramp down once the margarita is pulverized saving electricity. Probably there is a real world optimum rotation cycle that uses the least KWH to mix a margarita and a smart VFD could follow and adapt itself to that goal. So faster, quieter, safer, longer lasting, real-green as opposed to greenwashing sounds smart to me. I suspect I could pull that off for a kilobuck. That is not entirely out of line BTW for high end cooking gear.

The smart I will GET is a buggy bad UX app controlled blender that only runs on android 2.2 phones and no newer phone OS AND requires the mfgr to keep the big brother server in china online or else its just an abstract sculpture brick on my counter. It'll monitor every use to sell to corporations and it'll post on my behalf on facebook primarily to embarrass me. It'll be less reliable and shorter lived than a purely mechanical blender, and it'll probably require a foul and obnoxious financialization scheme where I have to subscribe to a monthly "blender service" to use it at all. An hour with the diagonal cutters and my soldering iron will rip out the "smart" thus improving my user experience, or maybe I'll have to commit some DMCA violations. Commit some DMCA violations to mix a margarita...

Its about the same level or intensity of hardware and tech in each case, its just the business model of "smart" right now is much more the latter than the former and therefore "smart" always suxs and the public is starting to figure that out. Which on a meta level sucks because if I had infinite spare time I am completely capable of making and selling the former "smart" blender, but the disaster of the "latter" smart blender will poison the marketplace such that people would run in terror away from my (former-type) smart blender.

> I really don't want a ... smart fridge.

Seriously? I want a smart fridge and smart cabinets. Everything RFID'd, and all the shelves are scales. Everything is tracked and when it gets low, my shopping list is auto-populated and semi-automatically purchased and delivered.

Not sure about clothing... Can you detect thread-bare socks?

I don't want it to be smart. I don't want a 'smart' blender or a 'smart' fridge or a 'smart' doorbell or whatever else you can think of. Most of this internet of things stuff is a bunch of quasi solutions looking for an actual problem.

I'd rather one that doesn't need replacing as often and works better as a traditional device.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, an exception for me would be a smart thermostat I think - but that's largely it.

I don't want an internet of things, I just want my things to work better, last longer and cost less money.

I'd be happier if they costed the same and lasted longer or twice as much and four times longer.

It used to be that you could spend more and get a more durable good but those days seem to have gone and other than aesthetics there doesn't seem to be the correlation between price and durability there was, I've had two £40 quid kettles fail in under a year a piece and the £6 quid one I got as a stopgap is still going 3 years later.

I'd be happy with it costing twice as much and lasting twice as long. Your total outlay is the same but you get to use a better device the whole time.

I want my blender to be smart enough to soft start the motor and to notice that it's stuck on an ice cube and not blow it's internal fuse. Fuse blowing = Insufficiently Smart Blender. You can avoid this by oversizing electrical components, but being smart is probably cheaper.

Smart doesn't have to mean complicated UI.

Smart appliances could also learn which ones are on the same circuit by watching voltage fluctuation and coordinate current usage. You see this in a primitive form at some older motels where the coffee maker is plugged into the refrigerator. It knows to not run the compressor while heating water.

This isn't what "smart" refers to these days though. You're just describing a higher quality product. Smart, today, equals connected and part of the Internet of Things.

Agreed. If a blender that shuts off when jammed is "smart" then anything with a circuit breaker is "smart," too.

Smart TV, smart thermostat, smart lighting, and a smart fridge are really the only connected household items I can see myself enjoying (the ad where the guy looks at what's in fridge in the grocery store worked on me). Other than that, some kind of smart electricity (turn things on and off remotely - more about remote management than anything else, ensure all lights are off, etc) is about all I can see myself wanting.

I don't need a smart doorbell when I could just have a peephole or a camera (that isn't networked anywhere that isn't local). I definitely don't need a smart blender. And I absolutely do not need a smart bed or smart bed sheets (unless someone invents a way for them to wash themselves - I'd buy that).

A "smart" doorbell could automatically pause your DVR, connect you to a one-way camera/mic system, and give you the option of turning on the two-way intercom, all without having to walk to the door. Very useful if you have a large or poorly laid out house where anything is far away from the front door. You could also set it up to send an SMS when a package is delivered and the delivery person rings the bell.

A conceivable smart bed would integrate with your sleep tracker, calendar, smart lights, and audio system to measure your sleep and wake you up at the optimum time.

But all of this needs to be done (and could be done) with strong privacy protections and network-level isolation.

I'm not saying I can't see any applications of smart tech in these spaces at all, just that they're wildly unnecessary in the average person's life. I can see the smart doorbell being useful if you have a very, very large house. And to me, there just doesn't seem to be much application for a smart bed that isn't already very well-covered by wearables and smart tech that already exists and is in reasonably wide use (unless said smart bed can intelligently clean and change my sheets and make the bed. In that case, proceed in haste).

Lately I've been wondering about very slow technology adopter groups/individuals. Let say that "Amish" are content with 1700's technology. If you want to move beyond horse and carriage, you could be a practitioner of the steam engine era of the 1880's, and reject other modern conveniences. If you like electric lighting, refrigeration, and automobiles, then you might be a 1930's type person. Maybe personal computers are useful, but you don't need anything beyond very basic computational needs, and are fine with 1980's technology. Is there a name for this? I suppose some-sort of derogatory Luddite term might apply. But what about voluntary groups, who don't care about the rest of the world, they just want to live a "simpler" life. Has anyone written on this subject? Are their any practitioners?

I want my fridge to keep my food cold and cost as little as possible. I want my blender to chop food to a chosen consistency. I want my appliances in general to perform their single function and nothing else.

In Home Depot the other day, I saw a $5000 smart refrigerator that was mechanically similar to $2000 - $3000 fridges. I don't need a $2000 camera+information+entertainment system in my fridge. Maybe I'd like it if it didn't add significant cost and provided a read-only API to monitor the temperature sensors and energy use. Honestly, I don't see myself paying much for smart devices or home automation, and I don't consider mandatory connections to outside services to be a feature.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the worst consumer product I have ever bought in my life, the absolutely abject Samsung "Smart" TV:

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2414066

Basically bricked after a hopeless remote update pushed by Samsung, Plex stopped working six months ago, Skype appears to have been deleted but mysteriously appears when my brother calls, nothing else works as advertised.

Replaced once when the panel failed (at great effort, their consumer support was similarly terrible in Australia).

It is an absolute dog. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Ouch. I went through three LG Google TVs about three years ago. They all seemed to have the same firmware issue (which LG refused to acknowledge), resulting in the TV restarting every 5-10 minutes.

LG paid to have the first two repaired. The "repaired" devices stayed on...but they no longer tuned channels. They gave me a TV that lacked the whole "tele-" part! I returned the third one without going through the silly repair process, and got a Sony Bravia. Never had a problem.

Is this a trick question? Smart enough (along with the rest of my home) to order the cheapest reliable courier to pick up a quantity of fresh vegetables sufficient for the dietary profile that I need based on my height and weight and dietary restrictions, to order the vegetables from my local grocer for the courier to pick up, to let the courier into my apartment when they arrive and put them in the fridge, and smart enough to get them out of the fridge and make me a smoothie at the time that I've ordered on my smart phone, and then go wash itself in my dishwasher. Why - how dumb do you want your blender to be? Just a spinning blade for you to leave in a grimy corner of your kitchen or stowed away in a cupboard, never to be used?

of course, some of this functionality logically overlaps (why should the blender put itself in my dishwasher rather than my dishwasher taking the blender; is the blender ordering my groceries or is my fridge) but you get the idea....

I think there are two seemingly-disjoint perspectives in these discussions, mostly based on whether people have enough time and engage with these appliances as part of a hobby; or whether they are strapped for time and engage with them as necessities.

So, I think a clarifying assumption might help: assume that you already have a person who acts in the role of the "glue" for your household—a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majordomo. Assume that they then have further staff under them, to whom they can delegate tasks—but that they also have the option of purchasing technology to automate the same tasks. Under this assumption, all the tasks in your household will get done, "magically", by combining some degree of technology with some degree of human effort.

The question that's really being asked in these discussions of "smart" appliances is: where is the optimum ROI between "fully automated" and "fully done manually by a paid human expert"? For any given task, how should the majordomo best allocate your dollars between paying labor and buying "smarter" equipment?

Automation usually lowers the total amount of human labor that must be expended (both by the expert, and by you to earn the money to pay the expert), but it also tends to lower the quality of the result—or "confine" the result to certain strict output products—compared to the results the human expert could achieve. How "smart" can we make a tool without taking away its precision to achieve great results in expert human hands? How "dumb" must a tool be to continue to allow for optimal results to be achieved, rather than mere satisfactory ones? Etc.

When I go to a garage sale, I can sometimes find a 30 year old blender that still works just fine.

I want a "smart" blender that still functions perfectly well in 30 years. I do not want a blender that becomes unusable because software is no longer supported, an API is no longer available, a proprietary connector is no longer in use, etc.

You want one of these[1]. I see them all over the place second-hand, and they are damned near indestructible.

Almost like the Kitchen-Aid mixers, that reached the heights of perfection somewhere in the 80s, and have declined and become cheaper and flimsier since.

[1] https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/ee/16/d3/ee16d37f1...

Oh, I have an excellent blender (a Breville). I was more expressing the problem I see with poorly thought out "smart" added to machinery - systems that will become unusable due to bit rot or connector conspiracy in far less time than they otherwise should.

IoT is just manufacturers trying to apply the SAAS model to their product. Sorry, but I don't want to have to change my thermostats every 2-3 years because the company I bought from decided to break the service it uses cough nest.

"Smart" devices now seem to come with Big Brother included. The Times gets this; most of the "smart" is about the thing reporting what you're doing to HQ, not providing the desired function.

First, the "smart" devices just reported if you were home. That was Nest. Then they started listening to your every word. That was Echo. Then they started watching you. That was the Samsung Smart TV.[1]

But it's so convenient. New Echo feature: "Alexa, tell Hacker News to read new headlines”. Really.

[1] http://www.cnet.com/how-to/samsung-smart-tv-spying/

"Smart" is only really a benefit for devices that I can reasonably want to do something when I'm not there.

Smart blender? When could I possibly want to blend something when I'm not physically near the blender?

Smart thermostat? I don't personally want one, but you can at least make the case that adjusting your home's heating/cooling remotely is a value add.

Smart fridge? When is the last time you even changed a setting on your fridge? I've lived in my current apartment for nearly 2 years and have never once even touched any of the settings. How does adding intelligence to a passive device provide any benefit whatsoever?

Hmm smart stuff. Make it so an oven can detect when something catches fire and shut itself off or lower temp. Particularly a toaster oven. Those things are dangerous, but they are so darn useful. When useful, popular and unsafe collide, theres your 'smart' problem to solve. Internet connected, meh. I mean it was cool when I saw my cousins BBQ thermometer notify his phone that the food was done. That was nifty but an alarm that would detect when popcorn burns in microwave means I'm safer from accidents or just arbitrary device variables in operation. Think of the sawstop table saw.

As most of the comments in this thread seem to be about "smart" home technologies, I'm curious to hear what people think about the introduction of "smart" things into civic and industrial environments (e.g. dumpster/public trash sensors, Bluetooth beacons for indoor navigation, "smart" bus stops, field sensors on farms, etc)?

The civic applications you mention solve an obvious problem. The problem solved by the hypothetical smart blender is not so obvious to most folks.

I want a smart combination conventional/convection/microwave oven that will ensure that the food's internal temperature has reached desired amount. Remote management of temperature would be a plus. It should know when it needs to auto-clean itself, it should be child-proof and it should turn itself off it left idle for too long.

I want a combination washer + dryer where I don't have to transload the clothes into a different drum. Dirty clothes go in, clean, dry clothes come out wrinkle-free.

I want a device which debones chicken thighs.

Some of these fit our current definition of 'smart', but some of them are just devices which don't yet exist in the form I want them to take. Right now, our drive to make things 'smart' is a cheap upsell, because it takes categories of appliances that already exist in our homes and tries to add features whose utility isn't always clear.

I want to see a re-imagining of how our homes (and restaurants) need to be outfitted instead.

> I want a device which debones chicken thighs.

Probably already exists, but not the scale you'd like.

Edit: I found it, and it's amazing. It can be had for a mere 45 million yen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrjFWrv_IAw

Smart blender? No. Duh.

Smart robotic house, including a kitchen? A machine/system that does grocery shopping, cooks for either or both of us if we don't feel like it - with the option for remote advance notice - and washes up?

Likewise for laundry, ironing, towel folding, toiletries, and domestic chores in general.

That could be a thing.

I'd pay money for the option to have breakfast appear on the counter a few minutes after I tell the house I'm up, or dinner waiting for me/us when I get in.

The big problem with IoT is that this kind of automation isn't practical yet. We're getting little piecemeal micro-products that sort of nearly kind of do something useful, but the big opportunity is automating the boring stuff in a more comprehensive and ambitious way - and the technology for that just isn't there today.

I follow @internetofshit on Twitter, who provides a running list and commentary on items of this nature.

At present, I can't imagine ever wanting a "smart" blender. I've got a 15-year old Vitamix that still powers through my daily smoothies with gusto. I had to replace it's blade assembly, once. I can't imagine a smart blender remaining functional for anywhere near that long.

However, I've also been hilariously wrong about tech before. For example, in the late 90's I heard about wireless network research. I didn't get it. What's so hard about plugging in a damned computer to ethernet? Now I have multiple wifi devices and not one of them is a desktop computer.

The payoff for smart devices might be hard for us to imagine right now. The risks, on the other hand, are readily apparent. For example, a smart thermostat could be hacked into and your house's temperature set to something undesirable. For example, if it's winter and you're in a cold climate, turning the heat off completely while you're away could cause your pipes to burst. It's therefore important that we keep security and reliability in mind when making these devices, so that what we might gain isn't offset by a certain loss in reliability. Continuing with the smart thermostat as an example, it should probably not be possible to set it below 0 C unless you have physical access to the device, and it should probably raise some very annoying warnings even then.

It's also important that "smart" devices remain functional for a time period comparable to their more traditional counterparts. We tolerate obscene obsolescence rates in cell phones, mainly because their capabilities are expanding so rapidly. People don't want to buy a new thermostat every couple of years. In fact, most people would expect a thermostat to last a couple of decades, even if it's "smart". That means designing them to last with standards that will be supported for a long time.

In short, we might not see the upside to "smart" appliances just yet, but they could materialize. It is, however, important to insist on "smart" appliances that aren't too "dumb", nor should we accept appliances with short lives as a result of being "smart".

It would be really smart if it did the one thing it is supposed to do. That goes for any appliance. Internet connected, high definition, VR toaster? No thanks. $7 and puts out a good toast? Yes, please.

The problem is that it seems to be cheaper to add internet crap to a bad toaster than it is to make a good toaster.

On top of this, there's no guarantee nowadays that if you pay more there's any more chance of getting a better quality product. It's just more money on advertising and shiny aesthetics usually.

I would pay double for a toaster that is guaranteed to work for 5 years. It must be possible, in the old days appliances lasted almost forever. It's just heated bread, for god's sake. I have gone through four microwaves in the last 5 years, and I only use the microwave probably every third day.

I always think of my microwave.

It has modes for defrost, popcorn and a bunch of other stuff I never ever use. Its always at 100% power, I just punch in a time.

I like my devices generally dumb. Though I do appreciate that microwaves turn off when you open the door (watching people open the office microwave while still on).

Out of coffee!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Bt0lkpV_U

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