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Comment by stacktrust | Hacker News Reader

The Instant Pot ecosystem would benefit from open-source firmware, so it can be integrated with Home Assistant and voice controlled systems like Alexa, Siri, Google. The company is under PE management and in bankruptcy, but for the sake of the millions of repairable devices out there, will hopefully find a second wind. If not, perhaps the internal controller can be replaced with a RPi.

Teardown photos: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Instant+Pot+Smart-60+Disassembl...

Disassembly video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=l4D8sLPZ3G0 & https://youtube.com/watch?v=bPrezDskchs

Instant Pot also made a $100 cooking blender clone of the $1500 Thermomix, https://www.wired.com/review/instant-pot-ace-multi-use-cooki.... Surprisingly, there are no affordable cooking robots? Bosch Cookit is above $1000, https://foodcook.net/kitchen/thermomix-tm6-vs-bosch-cookit/

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My most wanted Instant Pot modification is to replace the beeps it makes when it reaches pressure. It should play a chiptune version of Queen’s “Under Pressure”

Edit: mine might only beep when the timer expires, but that’s still a great opportunity to play that tune

In Germany there's plenty of Thermomix clones from groceries chains like Aldi and Lidl. Usually in the 300€ range. I own a Thermomix with the all cookbooks subscription but it's basically a glorified blender and soup maker for me these days (at least there will be plenty of pumpkin soups the next couple of month) as I usually cook with my normal equipment. I use my good old AirFryer more for example.

I always wanted to add some "smart cooking" device as a BA thesis topic for our students, because it just annoys me how closed these systems are (I briefly looked into reversing the TM). I mean how much cooler would it be if I could send any recipe to a smart cooking device and it would provide the easy stepthrough system of the TM instead of just their curated ones. Honestly I have never considered how cooking must feel for the blind so that's a very interesting use case.

I wonder why there wasn't a bigger market for home cooking devices integrated with Alexa. Even things like bluetooth temperature sensors would be highly useful, and you could conceivably use Alexa to monitor these devices and let you know if they go outside of your desired thresholds.

Temp-based automation is not (yet?) possible with Alexa Routines, besides Amazon making an exception for the inaccurate temperature sensors in some Echo devices, https://old.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/xbz5f6/how_to_a...

Home Assistant supports some meat thermometers, e.g. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/meater/ & https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/govee_ble/

Even Amazon killed their much-loved (30K reviews!) Alexa Microwave, https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Microwave-Small-Works-Al...

Anova $200 sous-vide cooker has Alexa integration, https://anovaculinary.com/blogs/blog/anova-voice-integration

  run  
  status
  temp raise or lower 
  timer elapsed, remaining or change
  stop

Honestly I love Home Assistant and rely on it daily.

That being said, I'm not sure I'd trust it controlling a pressure cooker.

I mean, the network instructions should really not be able to do anything the buttons on the front couldn’t, but I see your point all the same.

They have a failsafe via a pressure relief, 2 of them, so I wouldn’t worry too much.

Even as a sighted cook, I do rely on the noise a pressure cooker makes when relieving pressure at the red line. There is usually a visual pressure indicator, but on most models it is rather "binary" anyways, either the knob is out or in.

Agreed for a gas-heated pressure cooker, electric would be fine.

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