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Comment by hot_gril | Hacker News Reader

I'm wondering why you'd have a smart oven in the first place. Seems like all risk and no reward.

The ability to pre-heat my oven without standing in front of it. That's really the big win. But also to be able to tell if spouse or children left it on.

But I can walk to my oven and turn it on, which wasn't a real problem even when I lived in a huge house. What am I missing?

We really can’t force you to see the obvious if you’re set on not understanding something.

That's alright, I'm good. Smart ovens are pretty rare, so it seems like a lot of people don't get this.

> But I can walk to my oven and turn it on, which wasn't a real problem even when I lived in a huge house.

Rushing to get out the door, "Honey, did we turn off the stove?" Presumably you can then check with your phone.

People with internet controlled ovens turn them on before arriving home to shorten the time it takes to get dinner on the table.

In my case, being able to start it heating when I'm ten minutes away from home, so that I can get the kids fed ten minutes sooner.

Ok, that makes sense.

A timer to turn on an oven has been a thing for 25 years or more, probably there were clockwork ones before that. So it is down to very fine control on timing, or not turning the oven on, say, if you're in a traffic jam.

I'd expect the network connection to go down and the oven not to turn on at least as often as 10 minute makes an operable difference.

Maybe you don't decide at the start of your day, rather it comes up later that the kids want something baked for dinner that is already prepared and just needs to go into the oven, and you also get home from work at like 7pm. Idk how niche that is, but if that's someone's situation, the remote control makes sense.

Yup. Or the buses and the queues at childcare pickup and the speed of walking home with a 3 and 5 year old means that arrival times at home vary dramatically.

Lucky guy, it sounds like you've never experienced overwhelming anxiety over having possibly left the oven on while out of the house.

That'd be a legit feature, but far less involved than a full-on smart oven. At most, it'd have a way to turn off the oven remotely (but not turn it on).

Anyway, last time I had this anxiety, I checked my Ring camera in the kitchen that's posted there for reasons like this. Works for the stove and faucet too.

While I have neither, I'd much rather use a smart oven to see its status than have a constant camera feed of my kitchen.

It only records on demand, mainly cause it's on battery. Also doesn't control anything in the house.

A simple timer that switches off after a couple of hours would do. The timer could reset every time the oven door is opened. This should solve most issues. Long cooking could have a bypass button or somethong (if the door open reset is not enough).

I just remembered many old analog electrical ovens had this already , the only way to turn on the oven is by setting a timer (and when you needed it on for many hours you had to set another timer for yourself to remember to extend the oven timer ).

Even if you left the oven on, I believe it’s very unlikely to burn down the house.

These devices are designed to work for hours with minimal supervision. Given the size of the user base, IMO ovens are extremely reliable. And electricity prices are too low to be anxious about the costs.

> These devices are designed to work for hours with minimal supervision.

I wish. A while back, I put some (food) stuff to dry in the oven on a very low heat, knowing it would take all night to dry fully. After six hours, the oven decided that I must have accidentally left it on by mistake, and switched off automatically, and that stuff was wrecked when I got up in the morning and checked on it.

Indeed. I don't think I've ever heard of an oven burning down a house. And given how pretty much everyone has one, there must be many ovens left on alone in the house at every given moment.

If you think the oven can burn the house down, how about the anxiety of trusting some companies IoT oven not to be exploited by script kiddies to burn your house down?

Probably for some feature or astetic that's unrelated to the smart features, but is only available on the smart oven.

This os definitely most of it. Also, someone figured out they could do something with the parameters of the convection oven and get close to an air frier. Got the mode a year later. Lastly, when the meat thermometer hits temp, I get a notification. That is actually useful.

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